Adding Logical SR-IOV Ports
In order that an LPAR can use a virtual function of an SR-IOV adapter in PowerVM, a so-called logical port must be created for the LPAR. Which logical ports already exist can be displayed with the command “ms lssriov” and the option “-l” (logical port):
$ ms lssriov -l ms03
LOCATION_CODE ADAPTER PPORT LPORT LPAR CAPACITY CURR_MAC_ADDR CLIENTS
$
Since the SR-IOV adapters have just been configured to shared mode, there are of course no logical ports yet. To add a logical SR-IOV port to an LPAR, the command “lpar addsriov” (add SR-IOV logical port) is used. In addition to the LPAR, the adapter ID and the port ID of the physical port must be specified. Alternatively, a unique suffix of the physical location code of the physical port can also be specified:
$ lpar addsriov aix22 P1-C11-T1
$
The creation can take a few seconds. A quick check shows that a logical port has actually been created:
$ ms lssriov -l ms03
LOCATION_CODE ADAPTER PPORT LPORT LPAR CAPACITY CURR_MAC_ADDR CLIENTS
U78AA.001.VYRGU0Q-P1-C11-T1-S1 1 0 27004001 aix22 2.0 a1b586737e00 -
$
Similar to a managed system for virtual Ethernet, an internal switch is implemented on the SR-IOV adapters for each physical Ethernet port, see figure above. One of the virtual functions is assigned to each logical port. The associated LPARs access the logical ports directly via the PCI Express bus (PCIe switch).
An LPAR can easily have several logical SR-IOV ports. With the command “lpar lssriov” (list SR-IOV logical ports) all logical ports of an LPAR can be displayed:
$ lpar lssriov aix22
LPORT REQ ADAPTER PPORT CONFIG_ID CAPACITY MAX_CAPACITY PVID VLANS CURR_MAC_ADDR CLIENTS
27004001 Yes 1 0 0 2.0 100.0 0 all a1b586737e00 -
$
There are a number of attributes that can be specified for a logical port when it is created. Among other things, the following properties can be configured:
The complete list of attributes and their possible values can be found in the online help (“lpar help addsriov“).
As an example we add another logical port with port VLAN-ID 55 and a capacity of 20% to the LPAR aix22:
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$ lpar addsriov aix22 P1-C4-T2 port_vlan_id=55 capacity=20
$
The generated logical port thus has a guaranteed share of 20% of the bandwidth of the physical port P1-C4-T2! The LPAR now has 2 logical SR-IOV ports:
$ lpar lssriov aix22
LPORT REQ ADAPTER PPORT CONFIG_ID CAPACITY MAX_CAPACITY PVID VLANS CURR_MAC_ADDR CLIENTS
27004001 Yes 1 0 0 2.0 100.0 0 all a1b586737e00 -
2700c003 Yes 3 2 1 20.0 100.0 55 all a1b586737e01 -
$
After the logical ports have been added to the LPAR using the PowerVM Hypervisor, they appear in the Defined state. The logical ports appear under AIX as ent devices, like all other Ethernet adapters!
aix22 # lsdev -l ent\*
ent0 Available Virtual I/O Ethernet Adapter (l-lan)
ent1 Defined 00-00 PCIe2 10GbE SFP+ SR 4-port Converged Network Adapter VF (df1028e214100f04)
ent2 Defined 01-00 PCIe2 100/1000 Base-TX 4-port Converged Network Adapter VF (df1028e214103c04)
aix22 #
After the config manager cfgmgr has run, the new ent devices are in the Available state and can be used in exactly the same way as all other Ethernet adapters.