On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Lionel Dyck wrote: > we are once again embarking on a linux on zseries pilot and our mainframe > network folks are arguing about things...
Lionel, I join the VSWITCH chorus! Just be aware that using VSWITCH makes you totally dependent upon the network guys for availability and failover. What you gain from this lack of control, of course, is a reduction in resource consumption from being able to rid the environment of those pesky router guests, and the warm feeling that comes from knowing that if connectivity to your guests goes away it's Someone Else's Problem ;) Remind them that availability requires a two-way street -- not only does the request traffic have to reliably reach your guests, but the return traffic has to be able to reliably leave the guests and get back to the LAN. In this scenario that means in addition to dynamic routing for the network to learn the path to the Linux guests, VRRP or HSRP must be used to present a "single router image" to your Linux guests (since they no longer point to a nice stable z/VM TCPIP stack or Linux router guest within your mainframe anymore, but a router out in the LAN...). There has always been a need for us Penguin Farmers to work closely with the router jockeys -- with VSWITCH, we have to work closer than ever. It seems like your network engineers are fairly together (I like the sound of "no static routing"), so I expect you will have no trouble in this regard. Another point -- don't get VLAN and VSWITCH confused. VLAN is not required for VSWITCH, meaning that if all your guests can appear to be on the same network you do not have to configure any VLAN stuff at all (even at the LAN switch ports). Cheers, and best of luck, Vic Cross ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
