The Virtual I/O (VIO) server virtualization technology from IBM is a logical partition (LPAR) that runs a trimmed-down version of the AIX operating system. Virtual I/O servers have APV support, which allows sharing of physical I/O resources between virtual I/O clients.

Figure: Dynamic Multi-Pathing in the Virtual I/O serve illustrates DMP enablement in the Virtual I/O server.

DMP is fully functional in the Virtual I/O server. DMP administration and management commands (vxdmpadm, vxddladm, vxdisk) must be invoked from the non-restricted root shell.

$ oem_setup_env

Some example commands:

dmpvios1$ vxdmpadm getsubpaths dmpnodename=ibm_ds8x000_0337

NAME    STATE[A] PATH-TYPE[M] CTLR-NAME ENCLR-TYPE ENCLR-NAME  ATTRS 
==================================================================== 
hdisk21 ENABLED(A)  -         fscsi0   IBM_DS8x00  ibm_ds8x000  - 
hdisk61 ENABLED(A)  -         fscsi0   IBM_DS8x00  ibm_ds8x000  -
hdisk80 ENABLED(A)  -         fscsi1   IBM_DS8x00  ibm_ds8x000  -
hdisk99 ENABLED(A)  -         fscsi1   IBM_DS8x00  ibm_ds8x000  -

dmpvios1$ vxdmpadm listenclosure all

ENCLR_NAME  ENCLR_TYPE ENCLR_SNO STATUS    ARRAY_TYPE LUN_COUNT FIRMWARE 
======================================================================== 
disk        Disk       DISKS     CONNECTED Disk       1         -   
ibm_ds8x000 IBM_DS8x00 75MA641   CONNECTED A/A        6         -

See the PowerVM wiki for more in-depth information about VIO server and virtualization:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/virtualization/VIO

For more information, see the PowerVM Virtualization on IBM System p redbook:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247940.html