Breakdown Of Inter-Lpar Communications - Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 User Manual

Breakdown of Inter-LPAR
communications
If all the following conditions are met, the inter-LPAR communication in the same LPAR
manager using shared NICs, such as 1a and 1b, breaks down.
With LPAR manager firmware version 57-30 or earlier

With Linux

With redundant network configuration, using shared NICs

When switching networks occurs because some LPARs have detected a failure with

redundant configuration using shared NICs
When Route monitoring or ARP monitoring is configured in the redundant network
configuration (See Figure 1.), some LPARs may detect a failure. Switching networks
occurs in some LPARs, which have detected a failure, not in all LPARs. Thus, each LPAR
has different active VNIC, which causes inter-LPAR communication not to be available
between the active and standby (See Figure 2).
When MI link monitoring is configured, this trouble does not occur because switching
networks occurs in all LPARs at a failure. If switching back causes discrepancy, however
this failure occurs.
When you configure a redundant network with virtual NICs, do not use those virtual NICs
for inter-LPAR communication. If you need inter-LPAR communication, configure the
other virtual NICs, such as Va, that has no redundant configuration.
LPAR manager
LPAR1
Shared Shared
NIC NIC
Active
Figure 1: Redundant Network Configuration
LPAR2
Shared Shared
NIC NIC
Active
Physical Physical
NIC NIC
Management
1409
Active (1a)
Standby (2a)
server