Datasheet

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2 IBM i hosting IBM i
2.1 IBM i hosting IBM i concepts
The capability of an IBM i partition to host another IBM i partition involves hardware and
virtualization components. The hardware components are the storage, optical and network
adapters and devices physically assigned to the host IBM i LPAR. The virtualization components
are the system firmware and IBM i operating system objects necessary to virtualize the physical
I/O resources to client partitions. Figure 1 shows the possible solution components:
Figure 1: IBM i hosting IBM i components. Note: the IVE/Ethernet adapter represents a bridge that is
configured from the virtual Ethernet LAN to a physical Ethernet port. It can also represent an IVE adapter
with ports virtualized to the IBM i client partition.
2.1.1 VSCSI and Ethernet adapters
IBM i hosting IBM i uses an existing function of the system firmware, or IBM Power Hypervisor™:
the capability to create virtual SCSI (VSCSI) and Ethernet adapters in a partition. Virtual
adapters are created for each LPAR in the Hardware Management Console (HMC) or virtual
server in the Systems Director Management Console (SDMC). VSCSI adapters are used for
storage and optical virtualization; virtual Ethernet adapters are used for network virtualization.
Note that using virtual I/O resources from a host partition does not preclude an IBM i client
partition from owning physical hardware. A mix of virtual and physical hardware in the same