>>> On Wed, Aug 1, 2007 at 6:22 PM, in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Lindy Mayfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Just curious, because I don't know how the hardware works, if 30 >> mainframes do the work of 3,900 servers, that means 1 mainframe does >> 130. >> >> Does that mean that potentially that 1 mainframe has the equivalent of >> at least 130 network cards? I can see how most of the hardware is >> virtualized, but the networking I don't quite see, yet. How does that >> part work?
> In addition to the VSWITCH that Rich talked about, each port on an OSA card > provides between 15 > and 48 network interfaces (depending on the model), and you can have > multiple OSA cards. All > but the OSA-Express2 10 GbE Long Range OSA allows you to have 2 ports per > card. So, you don't > have 130 separate NICs, but a much smaller number than that. I visited one > customer site that > had a _bunch_ of OSAs in their z9. Far more than they would have needed if > they'd implemented > VSWITCH. I imagine their IBM hardware sales rep was very happy though. Boy did I get that chart wrong. The 15-48 is the number of OSA _cards_ you can have, based on processor and OSA model (according to SG24-5444). Argh. So, take Jim's note (640 TCP/IP stacks per port times 1 or 2 ports per card), and you wind up with a lot of real network interfaces. Mark Post ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
