Changing VLAN on AIX lpars in the same subnet

UNIX AIX
1

Hi Guys,

Our lpars is currently running on 2 different vlans (20, 30). Now we have a requirement that vlan 30 needs to be change to vlan 31 at the same subnet. I'm not sure on what is the best approach for this or what change is involve on the AIX side.

This is our setup.

Network switch - trunked (allowed vlan 20, 30)
note: vlan 20 is the previous default vlan before it was changed to "trunked" and added vlan 30.

VIO1 and VIO2 - SEA (ent4) with ent2 (PVID 1) and ent3 (PVID 88, VLAN ID 30) attached to it.

lpar 1 - ent0 (PVID 1)
lpar 2 - ent0 (PVID 30)

Scenario:

Network team needs to change vlan 30 to vlan 31.

Change to be made on AIX lpars:

  1. on VIOS, Add a new virtual adapter on SEA with PVID 89, VLAN ID 31
  2. on lpar 2, this is where I'm confused if I need to change anything or not. Do I need to change PVID 30 to 31? Or I can just DLPAR the current ent0 and add VLAN 31 there?

I'm also confused on how PVID works on AIX clients.

Any inputs will be very much appreciated.

Regards,
K

2

Can you bring your systems offline?
How much downtime do you receive from the service owner?
Are there HACMP (PowerHA) installed?
Do the VIOses have their own IP addresses in the same subnet or in some other?

3

Yes, I can bring the system offline maybe for 1 hour.
No HACMP.
VIOS' have their own IP addresses in their SEA, in a different subnet and vlan (Vlan 20)

  • K
4

You already get the best possible help from agent.kgb, so i won't interfere. But one detail puzzles me:

What do you mean by that? Because the "PVID" (Physical Volume Identifier) has nothing to do with networks at all. Or is that completely unrelated to the rest of your question? In this case please create a new thread (or ask a moderator, we can split this thread into two for the separate questions).

I hope this helps.

bakunin

5

if you can bring your systems offline:

  1. add VLAN 31 to the network switch ports.
  2. configure a new virtual adapter for VLAN 31 on both of your VIOSes.
  3. configure the virtual adapter into the existing SEA.
  4. configure a new virtual adapter for VLAN 31 for all of your AIX LPARs.
  5. check that it works (usually it is enough to get it up with ifconfig and look at traffic with tcpdump, even without an IP address).
  6. on day X, when you have downtime, remove your old virtual adapters with VLAN 30 from the AIX LPARs and configure IP addresses on the new virtual adapters.
  7. if everything works ok, remove virtual adapter with VLAN 30 from SEA and from all VIOSes.
  8. remove VLAN 30 from the network switch ports.
2 Likes
6

Sorry for the confusion there Bakunin. What I meant by the PVID is (Port VLAN ID) in the virtual ethernet adapter settings. But I know how this works now.

  • K

---------- Post updated at 11:32 AM ---------- Previous update was at 11:26 AM ----------

Thanks agent.kgb. This seems like a good plan. I will try this and see how it goes.

  • Kaelu