Specifications

Chapter 5. Planning 137
򐂰 Two Fibre Channel adapters (using FC3172 2-port 8Gb FC Adapters)
򐂰 One IBM Flex System Enterprise Chassis, with at least one Ethernet switch or
pass-through node and one Fibre Channel switch or pass-through node.
As mentioned earlier, the four ports are assigned in pairs to each of the two VIOS
virtual servers if only one Ethernet adapter is used, or each Ethernet adapter on
the p460 is assigned to each VIOS if two Ethernet adapters are used. Each FC
Card on the p460 is assigned to each VIOS.
Both VIOS servers in this example boot from SAN. The SAS controller and
internal drive can be owned only by one VIOS and, in this example, could not
be used.
This example for the p460, while not all-inclusive, provides the basics for a dual
VIOS environment. Memory requirements for additional virtual servers beyond
the base order amounts are not considered and need to be evaluated before
ordering either model.
The actual steps of creating a dual VIOS are not covered here; however, the
result of this type of configuration performed on a p460 is shown in Figure 5-6.
Figure 5-6 Dual VIOS configuration on an IBM Flex System p460 Compute Node
With the two virtual I/O servers installed, the normal methods of creating a Share
Ethernet Adapter (SEA) failover for virtual networking and redundant paths for
the client virtual server disks (N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) and virtual SCSI
(vSCSI)) can be configured.