power hypervisor

power hypervisor is the firmware layer sitting between the   hosted operating system and the server hardware.

suppose you are having p570 box in which you have created 4 Logical Partitions. you have assigned logical resources to  each of them. power hypervisor keeps track of the resources allocated to each partition and also take care that partitions don't access the other partition's assigned resources .

**power hypervisor enforces partition integrity by providing security layer between logical partitions.

** it provides VLAN channel between logical partitions that helps to reduce the need of physical ethernet adapter.


** it also monitors the service processor.if there is any loss of SP it will perform reset/reload operation.if it is not corrected it will notify the operating system.

power hypervisor provides following types of virtual I/O adapters.
  1. virtual scsi
   2. virtual ethernet
   3. virtual FC
  4. virtual console

what is virtual scsi?
for virtualization of storage,power hypervisor gives you virtual scsi mechanism.

virtual scsi adapter is needed for this which is defined in vio server partition.


there are two types of virtual scsi adapter
 virtual client scsi adapter
 virtual server scsi adapter

 all the scsi physical storage devices are assigned  to vio server.

how the adapters are connected?

1.using DLPAR operation , you can create  virtual scsi  server adapter if you don't want to reboot the server.
  2.on client partitions also  you define the virtual client scsi adapters. through DLPAR operation. mapping should be correct.

ex. of mapping the adaapters

while defining server adapter, note the following
slot no.  3
remote partition  partition2
remote partition virtual slot number  4

for client adapter
slot no. - 4
remote partition  vios
remote partition slot no.  3

3. after that run#cfgdev on vio server . one virtual host device (vhost) device will be available on vio server that represents that particular partition.

4. you cam map the logical  volume etc  to  a particular partition virtual host device and that will be available as a disk on client partition  after running the #cfgmgr command on that partition.


 vitual scsi can be used as
1. virtual disk
2. virtual optical devices(vtopt)
3. virtual tape.

VIRTUAL ETHERNET

power hypervisor provides a virtual ethernet switch function that allows partitions on the same server to use a fast and secure communication without any need of physical intercconnection.

***virtual ethernet is a part of base system configuration and doesn't need vio server.