The earlier OSAs had special code to enable IPv6. I (and many others, I’m sure) screamed at IBM that having them in the loop of OSA firmware protocol support for every possible protocol that someone was going to need was unsustainable, which resulted in the layer 2 support.
If you’re doing this long term, then get layer 2 support working. If you just need to throw a IPv6-enabled guest up for testing purposes, you don’t need to get layer 2 working for IPv6 if you have up-to-date OSA microcode. Wrt to dedicated vs VSWITCH, use VSWITCH if you possibly can. Isolates you from the weirdnesses of the various OSAs, and the impact of the extra code is minimal. Actually, I was also trying to configure this linux guest using dedicate OSA devices in stead of vswitch. Does it still need layer2? Thanks! Anson Y.
