Some time ago I wrote a short blog about Power and PowerVM Reference Information. Many of the PowerVM resources cover virtualization with the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS). If you are not familiar with the VIOS, I’ve shamelessly copied the following from the Knowledge Center overview information:
The VIOS is part of the PowerVM Editions hardware feature. The VIOS is software that is located in a logical partition. This software facilitates the sharing of physical I/O resources between client logical partitions within the server. The VIOS provides virtual Small Computer Serial Interface (SCSI) target, virtual Fibre Channel, Shared Ethernet Adapter, and PowerVM Active Memory Sharing capability to client logical partitions within the system. The VIOS also provides the Suspend/Resume feature to AIX, IBM i, and Linux client logical partitions within the system.
As the overview paragraph points out, virtualization of I/O is required for some of the advanced features available with PowerVM, such as partition suspend and resume and live partition mobility.
The Virtual I/O Server is documented within the hardware documentation; you just need to find the correct link for your specific hardware model.
This blog post was edited on March 30, 2020 to remove obsolete information. Nearly all the prior information referenced from the original blog is no longer available.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.