What is VIO?

The Virtual I/O Server facilitates the sharing of physical I/O resources among client logical partitions within the server. The Virtual I/O Server provides virtual SCSI target, virtual fibre channel, Shared Ethernet Adapter, PowerVM Active Memory Sharing and PowerVM Client Partition Mobility capability to client logical partitions within the system. As a result, client logical partitions can share SCSI devices, fibre channel adapters and Ethernet adapters. With VIOS, you can expand the amount of memory available to logical partitions by using paging space devices, and also move AIX and Linux logical partitions from one system to another.

The Virtual I/O Server is included in all PowerVM Editions.

Using the Virtual I/O Server facilitates the following functions:

    Sharing of physical I/O resources among logical partitions on the system
    Provisioning of I/O resources without requiring additional physical I/O resources
    Creating more logical partitions than there are I/O slots or physical devices available
    Maximizing use of physical resources on the system
    Helping to reduce the Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure
    Facilitating Live Partition Mobility (LPM), LPAR Suspend and Resume, and Active Memory Sharing (AMS)