IBM i client partition considerations

There are important considerations for setting up and using IBM® i client logical partitions on system hardware. You can use the Hardware Management Console (HMC) or IBM Integrated Virtualization Manager to manage IBM i client logical partitions.

Note the difference between client logical partitions and logical partitions:

client logical partition: A partition that is using some or all of its I/O resources from another partition. For example, IBM i is using the resources of the Virtual I/O Server logical partition on a blade server.
logical partition: A partition that is using its own physical I/O resources.

IBM i client logical partition environments

The following table summarizes the environments in which IBM i can be a client logical partition. The Integrated Virtualization Manager provides a Web-based system management interface that you can use to manage POWER® 6 or later processor-based blade servers and POWER 6 or later processor-based servers that use the Virtual I/O Server. Hereafter the term Blade server is used to mean POWER processor-based blade servers. The following are specific requirements regarding the management and configuration of IBM i client logical partitions:

On blade servers, the server logical partition must be a Virtual I/O Server partition and the Integrated Virtualization Manager must be used to manage the system.
In a Hardware Management Console (HMC) environment, the server partition can be either a Virtual I/O Server or IBM i partition.

Table 1. IBM i client logical partition environments
System hardware	Management tool	Server logical partition	Client logical partition
POWER 6 or later processor-based blade servers	Integrated Virtualization Manager	Virtual I/O Server	IBM i
POWER 6 or later processor-based server	Integrated Virtualization Manager	Virtual I/O Server	IBM i
POWER 6 or later processor-based server	Hardware Management Console	Virtual I/O Server	IBM i
POWER 6 or later processor-based server	Hardware Management Console	IBM i	IBM i

When the IBM i client logical partition is managed by Integrated Virtualization Manager, you can assign only virtual resources to the IBM i partition. Disk units, optical devices, tape devices, and Ethernet are accessed using virtual I/O adapters. The Virtual I/O Server logical partition provides the disk, optical, tape, and network resources to the client logical partition. A major benefit of using virtual I/O is that you can share the hardware among the client logical partitions through the server logical partition, which allows you to optimize the amount of hardware and energy used by your system. If you are using Integrated Virtualization Manager to manage your system, certain limitations exist for IBM i client logical partitions, because only virtual hardware can be assigned to those logical partitions.

The HMC allows you to assign physical I/O to IBM i client logical partitions without regard to the operating system on the logical partition that provides disk resources. In contrast, if you use the Integrated Virtualization Manager, the Virtual I/O Server must own all physical I/O on the system, which means that the IBM i client logical partitions cannot own any physical I/O. In the HMC environment, you can use either the Virtual I/O Server or IBM i as the server logical partition. In an HMC environment, IBM i partitions can perform backups by directly attaching to a tape drive or tape library, or through tape virtualization from the Virtual I/O Server. IBM i host partitions cannot virtualize tape resources to IBM i client partitions. The partition configuration is saved from the HMC.

Although you can run the IBM i client logical partition with only virtual I/O hardware on HMC-managed systems, you still have the option to assign physical hardware to the IBM i client logical partition for any functions that are not supported by virtual I/O hardware.