Tom,
z/VSE absolutely supports the VSwitch. I've been using it with VSE/ESA
and subsequent releases since VSE/ESA 2.7. Also, both commercial TCP/IP
stacks provide the required support. It simply looks like an OSA
Express device to the operating system, no magic there.
Use NICDEF in the directory, and ADD the devices to z/VSE like it was an
OSA Express. Your TCP/IP documentation will have additional details on
how to configure VSE and the stack specifically. If you need more
information, let me know.
Tom Rae wrote:
Thanks, Mark.
Initial input that I received suggested that z/VSE did not support
virtual NICs as required to couple to a VSWITCH. I will look into this
further, though, as a VSWITCH does sound more appealing. CP DEFINE NIC
is supposed to create "OSA-type" devices, which z/VSE may recognize as
actual OSA devices.
The exclusion of xx00-xx02 and xxFE below was just due to the existing
OSA devices at these addresses... no black magic involved!
Mark Post wrote:
-snip-
One of the customers that I support is using vCTCAs to connect
multiple z/VSE and Linux guests to their z/VM TCP/IP and SNA SVMs.
External connections are provided by QDIO and non-QDIO OSA-Express2
devices (both Gb and 1000Base-T) that are attached to the SVMs. We
are looking at providing more efficient, direct network access to
the guests by defining additional devices on the OSAs and attaching
them directly to the guests.
Why not use a VSWITCH instead? Far less systems programmer effort
needed to maintain, automatic failover is provided by the VSWITCH
controller, you can do Link Aggregation if needed, etc.
and that all of the new devices must be in the xx03-xxFD range.
I have never heard of this before. Unless you're saying that 00-02
and 0FE-0FF are already in use, but that would be specific to your
situation, not a generic requirement.
--
Rich Smrcina
