In order for a vNIC adapter to be removed again, it must no longer be in use. In addition, the associated ent device must first be removed from the operating system under AIX.

The following two ent devices are currently available on the LPAR aix22 under AIX:

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

The Ethernet adapter ent1 is of the type “vNIC Client Adapter“. So, ent1 is the adapter, which shall be removed in the following. First we detach the interface en1 from the Ethernet adapter ent1:

aix22 # ifconfig en1 detach
aix22 #

This immediately stops all IP traffic via en1/ent1! Next, the vNIC Ethernet adapter can be removed from the operating system:

aix22 # rmdev -dl ent1
ent1 deleted
aix22 #

To remove the vNIC adapter using PowerVM, we need the virtual slot number of the vNIC adapter:

$ lpar lsvnic aix22
LPAR_NAME  SLOT  MODE  FAILOVER  PVID  PRIORITY  MAC_ADDR      ALLOWED_VLAN_IDS  BKDEVS
aix22      6     ded   No        0     0         81253aa07306  all               1
$

The LPAR aix22 has only one vNIC adapter in slot 6.

The adapter can be removed with the command “lpar rmvnic” (remove vNIC adapter). In addition to the LPAR, the virtual slot number of the vNIC adapter is specified:

$ lpar rmvnic aix22 6
$

The associated vNIC backing devices (vNIC servers) and logical SR-IOV ports on the virtual I/O servers are automatically removed by the hypervisor.