IBM BladeCenter PS700 - Page 104

90 IBM BladeCenter PS700, PS701, and PS702 Technical Overview and Introduction
Figure 3-6 shows a configuration example of an SEA with one physical and two virtual
Ethernet adapters. An SEA can include up to 16 virtual Ethernet adapters on the VIOS that
share the same physical access.
Figure 3-6 Architectural view of a SEA
A single SEA setup can have up to 16 Virtual Ethernet trunk adapters and each virtual
Ethernet trunk adapter can support up to 21 VLANs (20 VIDs and 1 PVID). The number of
SEAs that can be set up in a VIOS partition is limited only by the resource availability, as there
are no configuration limits.
Unicast, broadcast, and multicast is supported, so protocols that rely on broadcast or
multicast, such as Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
(DHCP), Boot Protocol (BOOTP), and Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) can work across
an SEA.
For a more detailed discussion about virtual networking, see the following Web page:
http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/whitepapers/aix_vn.pdf
Tip: A Linux partition can provide bridging function as well, by using the brctl command.
Note: An SEA does not need to have an IP address configured to perform the Ethernet
bridging functionality. Configuring an IP address is required to access the IVM.
CLIENT 1
VIOS
en3
(if)
ETHERNET
SWITCH
P
V
I
D=1
PVID=2
PVID=99
V
I
D=2
PVID=1 PVID=1
H
Y
PER
V
I
S
O
R
VLAN = 2
VLAN = 1
VLAN = 2 PVID=1
External Network
ent0
(virt)
en0
(if)
en0
(if)
en0
(if)
ent0
(virt)
ent0
(virt)
CLIENT 2 CLIENT 3
ent3
(SEA)
ent2
(virt)
ent1
(virt)
ent0
(phy)