International Business Machines Corporation

Colin R DeVilbiss

Kristopher Craig Whitney

Charles Scott Graham

Nicholas J Rogness

Wayne Gustav Holm

Scott Thomas Robinson

David B Murray

Virtual Network Interface Connection (VNIC) is a client-server protocol that virtualizes access to a single physical Ethernet network adapter. 'Dedicated VNIC' describes a configuration where a VNIC server is connected to a single VNIC client via a command/response queue (CRQ), allowing minimal overhead when communicating between the client and the Ethernet network adapter. A VNIC server failover mechanism includes multiple VNIC servers on a prioritized list. The top VNIC server on the prioritized list is selected to serve a VNIC client when a CRQ is opened by the client. When the selected VNIC server stops working, the VNIC server failover mechanism selects the next VNIC client in the prioritized list as the active VNIC server, and establishes a connection to the VNIC client's CRQ. In this manner, recovery of a failure in a VNIC server is done in a way that does not require any changes to the VNIC client.

Server-side failover between dedicated VNIC servers

Systems and methods to reduce table lookups and network traffic are provided. A bridging device may receive a unicast frame to be bridged. The unicast frame may be transmitted to at least one network of a plurality of networks. The bridging device may determine if the unicast frame was successfully delivered to the at least one network.

Confirmed delivery of bridged unicast frames

A method, apparatus, and computer program product dynamically allocate limited system memory for direct memory access (DMA) among a plurality of input/output (I/O) adapters in a system partition. Initially a minimum entitlement of I/O entitled memory capacity is allocated to each of the respective multiple I/O adapters. The minimum entitlement enables operation of an I/O adapter driver. Additional entitlement of I/O entitled memory capacity is selectively allocated based upon I/O demands of each I/O adapter.

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MN, United States of America

Colin R DeVilbiss