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There are considerations regarding the us e of IEEE 802.3ad Link Ag gregation, 802.1Q VLAN tagging, and SEA:

• There is a maximum of 8 active ports and 8 standby ports in an 802.3ad Link Aggregation device.
• Each of the links in a 803.3ad Link Aggregation device should have their speeds set to a common speed setting. For example, set all links to 1Gb/Full duplex.
• A virtual Ethernet adapter is capable of supporting up to 20 VLANS (including the Port Virtual LAN ID - PVID).
• A maximum of 16 virtual Ethernet adapters with 20 VLANS assigned to each adapter can be associated to an SEA adapter.
• A maximum of 256 virtual Ethernet adapters can be assigned to a single virtual server, including the VIOS partitions.
• The IEEE 802.1Q standard supports a maximum of 4096 VLANS.
• SEA failover is not supported in IVM as it only supports a single VIOS partition.

Scenario: Configuring Shared Ethernet Adapter failover with load sharing

Important: To create or enable the SEA failover with Load Sharing, you have to enable the load sharing mode on the primary SEA first before enabling load sharing mode on the backup SEA. To change the ha_mode from sharing to auto, this means disabling the load sharing mode, set ha_mode to auto on the primary SEA first, then set it on the backup to minimize the chance of a broadcast storm of the SEA.

Use this scenario to help you to configure primary and backup Shared Ethernet Adapters for load sharing in the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) logical partitions.

Situation

You are the system administrator responsible for planning and configuring the network in an environment with the VIOS running. You want to provide load sharing in addition to Shared Ethernet Adapter failover to improve the bandwidth of the VIOS logical partition without impact to higher network availability.

Objective

The objective of this scenario is to configure primary and backup Shared Ethernet Adapters for load sharing so that you can use both the Shared Ethernet Adapters by sharing the bridging workload between them.

Prerequisites and assumptions

  The Hardware Management Console (HMC) was set up. For more information about Installing and configuring the Hardware Management Console, see Installing and configuring the Hardware Management Console.
  You understand the partitioning concepts as described in the Logical partitioning. For more information about Logical partitioning, see Logical partitioning.
  You have configured primary and backup Shared Ethernet Adapters in the VIOS logical partitions. See Scenario: Configuring Shared Ethernet Adapter failover.
  You understand what Shared Ethernet Adapter load sharing is and how it works. See Shared Ethernet Adapters for load sharing.
  The VIOS must be at Version 2.2.1.0, or later.
  The VIOS servers with the primary and backup Shared Ethernet Adapter support load sharing.
  Two or more trunk adapters are configured for the primary and backup Shared Ethernet Adapter pair.
  The virtual local area network (VLAN) definitions of the trunk adapters are identical between the primary and backup Shared Ethernet Adapter pair.
  You cannot use the Integrated Virtualization Manager with multiple VIOS logical partitions on the same server.

Note: Enable load sharing mode on the primary Shared Ethernet Adapter (the Shared Ethernet Adapter with higher priority) before you enable load sharing mode on the backup Shared Ethernet Adapter (the Shared Ethernet Adapter with lower priority). To configure Shared Ethernet Adapters for load sharing, use the VIOS command line and run the following command. Run this command on both Shared Ethernet Adapters.

mkvdev -sea physical_adapter -vadapter virtual_adapter -default virtual_adapter\ -defaultid PVID_of_virtual_adapter -attr ha_mode=sharing ctl_chan=control_channel_adapter

For example, in this scenario, run the following command on both Shared Ethernet Adapters:

mkvdev -sea ent0 -vadapter ent1 -default ent1 -defaultid 60 -attr ha_mode=sharing ctl_chan=ent2

You can restart load sharing by using the chdev command on the backup Shared Ethernet Adapter. To restart load sharing, ensure that the ha_mode attribute is set to sharing on both the primary and backup Shared Ethernet Adapter. By using the VIOS command line, run the chdev command on the backup Shared Ethernet Adapter. If the load sharing criteria are met, load sharing restarts.

Maximum number of virtual adapter per partition:

There is flexibility for you to plan your own adapter numbering scheme. The Maximum virtual adapters setting needs to be set in the Virtual Adapters window to allow for your numbering scheme. The maximum setting is 65535 but the higher the setting, the more memory the managed system reserves to manage the adapters.

To list all physical Ethernet adapters and EtherChannel adapters available for creating an

SEA, enter lsdev -type ent4sea

Smitty for VIOS: cfgassist

                             Config Assist for VIOS

Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.

  Set Date and TimeZone
  Change Passwords
  Set System Security
  VIOS TCP/IP Configuration
  Install and Update Software
  Storage Management
  Devices
  Performance
  Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
  VIOS Cluster Storage Subsystem
  Electronic Service Agent



 Update the Fibre Channel adapter SCSI protocol devices attributes listed in step 5 to 
enable dynamic tracking and fast failover, enter:
chdev -dev fscsi0 -attr dyntrk=yes fc_err_recov=fast_fail
chdev -dev fscsi1 -attr dyntrk=yes fc_err_recov=fast_fail
Note: If the Fibre Channel adapter SCSI protocol device is busy, append the flag -perm 
to the command to update the VIOS database only. The attributes are not applied to the 
device until the VIOS is rebooted. For example:
chdev -dev fscsi0 -attr dyntrk=yes fc_err_recov=fast_fail -perm
Recomendation:  The fast_fail and dyntrk setting is useful in a multi-Fibre Channel 
adapter setup or dual VIOS setup. The fast_fail setting allows I/O to immediately fail if 
the adapter detects link events such a lost link between the Fibre Channel adapter and 
SAN switch port. The dyntrk setting allows th e Virtual I/O Server to tolerate cabling 
changes in the SAN.

Example 3-9   Disk attributes of hdisk6
$ lsdev -dev hdisk6 -attr | grep -E "unique_id|reserve"
reserve_policy   single_path Reserve Policy                   True
unique_id       3E213600A0B8000114632000092784EC50F0B 0F1815      FAStT03IBMfcp Unique 
device identifier         False
To deactivate the SCSI reserve lock on the disk, in this case hdisk6, enter:
chdev -dev hdisk6 -attr reserve_policy=no_policy
Information:  Disks using EMC PowerPath, IBM SDDPCM, and IBM SDD drivers also 
have their LUN IDS embedded in the unique_id string. Use their supplied commands to 
show the LUN IDS in a more readable format. Refer to their respective manuals to 
obtain the disks complete with LUN IDS.
EMC disks appear with hdiskpowerX notation and SDD disks appear with vpathX 
notation. Use their disk notations with the lsdev command sequence instead of hdisk.
Other disk subsystems may use different fields to set their SCSI reserve locks. Use the 
lsdev command sequence without the pipe to grep, i.e.  lsdev -dev sampledisk -attr.