IBM Power Systems SR-IOV: Technical Overview and Introduction

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication describes the adapter-based virtualization capabilities that are being deployed in high-end IBM POWER7+™ processor-based servers.

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) is a virtualization technology on IBM Power Systems servers. SR-IOV allows multiple logical partitions (LPARs) to share a PCIe adapter with little or no run time involvement of a hypervisor or other virtualization intermediary.

SR-IOV does not replace the existing virtualization capabilities that are offered as part of the IBM PowerVM® offerings. Rather, SR-IOV compliments them with additional capabilities.

This paper describes many aspects of the SR-IOV technology, including:

A comparison of SR-IOV with standard virtualization technology
Overall benefits of SR-IOV
Architectural overview of SR-IOV
Planning requirements
SR-IOV deployment models that use standard I/O virtualization
Configuring the adapter for dedicated or shared modes
Tips for maintaining and troubleshooting your system
Scenarios for configuring your system

This paper is directed to clients, IBM Business Partners, and system administrators who are involved with planning, deploying, configuring, and maintaining key virtualization technologies.