Although the construction of a vNIC adapter is not that simple, after all it consists of at least 3 adapters (vNIC client adapter, vNIC server adapter and logical SR-IOV port), a vNIC adapter can be created relatively easily with just one command. In the simplest case, only the virtual I/O server for the vNIC backing device and the physical SR-IOV port have to be specified. The command to create a vNIC adapter is “lpar addvnic” (add vNIC adapter):

$ lpar addvnic aix22 6 ms03-vio1 P1-C11-T1
$

Here a vNIC adapter has been created in virtual slot 6 of the client LPAR aix22. The vNIC backing device is created on the virtual I/O server ms03-vio1, together with the logical SR-IOV port for the physical SR-IOV port with physical location code P1-C11-T1. Instead of the physical location code, the adapter ID and physical port ID of the physical SR-IOV port can also be specified.

Config manager cfgmgr must be started on an AIX LPAR in order that the vNIC client adapter can be used. Like all other Ethernet adapters, the vNIC client adapter receives a device name with the prefix ent:

aix22 # cfgmgr
aix22 #
aix22 # lsdev -l ent\*
ent0 Available  Virtual I/O Ethernet Adapter (l-lan)
ent1 Available  Virtual NIC Client Adapter (vnic)
aix22 #

The configuration of the new Ethernet adapter works in the same way as for any other Ethernet adapter!

The existing vNIC adapters of an LPAR can be displayed with the command “lpar lsvnic” (list vNIC):

$ lpar lsvnic aix22
LPAR_NAME  SLOT  MODE  FAILOVER  PVID  PRIORITY  MAC_ADDR      ALLOWED_VLAN_IDS  BKDEVS
aix22  6     ded   Yes       0     0         81253aa07306  all               1
$

The output shows that there is only one vNIC adapter in slot 6 of the LPAR. There is one vNIC backing device (column BKDEVS). All attributes of the vNIC adapter have default values. When creating a vNIC adapter, the attributes can be specified on the command line. An overview of the possible attributes can be found e.g. in the online help (“lpar help addvnic“).

The associated vNIC backing devices of the vNIC adapters can also be listed, for this only the option “-a” (all vNIC backing devices) must be used for “lpar lsvnic”:

$ lpar lsvnic -a aix22
                           FAILOVER                                         PHYS  LOGICAL   CURRENT     MAX   
LPAR_NAME  SLOT  FAILOVER  PRIORITY  ACTV  STATUS       VIOS_NAME  ADAPTER  PORT  PORT      CAPACITY  CAPACITY
aix22      6     Yes       50        1     Operational  ms03-vio1  1        0     27004005  2.0       100.0
$

The operational value in the column STATUS shows that the associated physical SR-IOV port has a link, so network packets can be sent and received. The logical SR-IOV port 27004005 belonging to the vNIC backing device has a guaranteed capacity of 2% of the physical port.

The logical SR-IOV port 27004005 has been created on the virtual I/O server ms03-vio1:

$ lpar lssriov ms03-vio1
LPORT     REQ  ADAPTER  PPORT  CONFIG_ID  CAPACITY  MAX_CAPACITY  PVID  VLANS  MAC_ADDR  CLIENTS
27004005  Yes  1        0      16384      2.0       100.0         0     all    a1b586737e00   aix22
$

The associated vNIC backing devices on the virtual I/O server can be displayed using “lpar lsvnicbkdev“:

$ lpar lsvnicbkdev ms03-vio1
                              FAILOVER           PHYS  LOGICAL               MAX   
LPAR_NAME  ACTV  STATUS       PRIORITY  ADAPTER  PORT  PORT      CAPACITY  CAPACITY
ms03-vio1  1     Operational  50        1        0     27004005  2.0       100.0
$

The output is similar to the output of “lpar lsvnic -a“.