Best Practices for Live Partition Mobility (LPM) Networking

Live Partition Mobilty (LPM) is a feature of the PowerVM Enterprise Edition that can move the live AIX, Linux and IBMi logical partitions from one frame to another, without any downtime. It can also be move inactive logical partitions. The mobility process transfers the logical partition environment, including the processor state, memory, attached virtual devices, and connected users. LPM creates TCP connections between Source MSP and Destination MSP specified in HMC GUI or migrlpar command to do LPM.
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The following are common customer network configuration on VIOS.
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The following are the networking best practices to implement and manage an LPM environment.
     • 10 Gb or higher link speed between Source MSP (Mover Service Partition) and  
        destination MSP is preferred, but it is not required.
     • Highly recommend to use IP address on the physical adapter as shown in case 1.
     • Enable large_send and large_receive on the physical adapter.
     • Enable jumbo_frame on physical adapter to use pcket size up to 9000 bytes. To
        use this option, it needs to be enabled on all switches in between.
     • It is highly recommend to migrate between same speed networks (e.g. 10 Gb to
        10 Gb or 1 Gb to 1 Gb). For example, if 10 Gb ethernet adapter is used on source
        MSP and 1 Gb ethernet adapter on destination MSP then 10 Gb adapter can
        overwhelm the 1 Gb adapter and that leads to retransmissions, poor LPM
        performance and LPM stalling. For situations like this, improve the LPM
        performance by either using same speed adapter on both MSPs or enabling flow
        control on the switch connected to 1 Gb ethernet adapter. The flow control is
        enabled by default on 10 Gb and 1 Gb adapters.
     • Redundant MSPs are used by default for better performance and reliability
       wherever the configuration allows. Redundant or dual MSP setups are
       recommended for all the cases except case 4 (IP address on Virtual Ethernet
       Adapter).
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Author: Darshan Patel
Operating System: VIOS
Hardware: Power
Feedback: aix_feedback@wwpdl.vnet.ibm.com

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