> I have one z9 foot-print with two books.   In one I run one zVM1 (CP1)
> and on the sencond, I run zVM2 (CP2).  Under each zVM I run Linux
> guest servers.   The fail-over for a given Linux guest is on the
> opposite zVM.
> 
> My question, how should I set up the life-line between the fail-over
> linux guests?
> do I need to go hypersockets, regular LAN, etc?

Either real hipersocket (completely inside the box, no external traffic
required) or a VLAN-aware VSWITCH with external devices handling network
HSRP. 

The plus side of the hipersocket is that as long as the mainframe
hardware is functioning at all, you can rely on it being there, and
outside the scope of random network meltdowns outside the box.
Disadvantage is the complexity of setup and that there are a limited
number of real hipersockets in the box, and the IO gens to use them are
not trivial. You also don't want to mix traffic from other things on the
same segment as your heartbeat processes; some heartbeat monitors get a
little hyperactive if they see excessive traffic. The downside is that
physical hipersockets arent' extendable to another box. 

The plus of a VLAN aware VSWITCH is that all the network redundancy
processing can be moved to outboard equipment, and you can have the
routers do all the failover processing and monitoring. This is much more
familiar to your average networking type, and is more likely to pass
your architecture board without irritating explanations. Since VLANs can
be routed across existing layer 2 infrastructure, you get the ability to
eventually separate the two LPARs w/o changing the setup, and if there
are encryption requirements, you can implement them in the external
boxes w/o impacting resource utilization on the mainframe side. 

If it were me, I'd probably go with the VSWITCH. Heartbeat packets
really don't exploit the best parts of real hipersockets (high volume
bulk data transfer) much, and the ability to separate stuff easily later
is a big architectural win in my book. 

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