Question & Answer
Question
Answer
What is Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) Simplification?
The SEA simplification feature allows to configure SEA in High Availability (HA) without dedicated control channel adapter. When configuring SEA in HA mode with control channel adapter, mistake can be made by mismatching control channel adapter or by adding a vlan that is already added on a Virtual Ethernet Adapter. These mistake can cause network outage. These mistake can be avoided by this feature because this feature match partners between them by using a dedicated management vlan 4095 (not configurable by the user). VLAN 4095 is not user configurable. It is enabled in hypervisor at the SEA HA configuration time. SEA HA partners are identified by matching their PVID (Port VLAN ID). During SEA HA configuration, broadcast based Discovery protocol is used to discover HA partner. After the partner is identified, discovery heartbeat is exchanged in addition to control channel heartbeat to monitor partner's existence.
This feature is available for both failover and sharing mode. The option of configuring SEA in HA mode with control channel adapter is still available
What is the prerequisite to use this feature?
- VIOS level 2.2.3.0 and higher.
- System firmware level 7.8 and higher.
- Not supported on model MMB and MHB irrespective of VIOS and system firmware level.
How to use this feature?
To use this feature, create SEA without specifying the ctl_chan attribute.
e.g. mkvdev -sea ent11 -vadapter ent3 -default ent3 -defaultid 4 -attr ha_mode=auto
Note: defaultid must be same as PVID of default adapter.
How does entstat/netstat output look like?
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Document Information
Modified date:
19 February 2022
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