I am in the process of updating firmware/microcode on Ethernet cards in a two VIOS environment.  As part of the instructions, it says:

1) Stop all applications that use this interface/adapter

2) ***This step is for VIOS Users only*** – Detach and Remove the SEA (Shared Ethernet Adapter) interface

# lsdev -C |grep ent

ent6       Available 02-08         4-Port Gigabit Ethernet PCI-Express Adapter 

ent7       Available                   Shared Ethernet Adapter

a)    Before detaching the interface, record the ip address and any other pertinent information that was configured on the Adapter.  This information may be needed if the microcode update overwrites this section on the Adapter.

b)    "ifconfig en"X" detach" – where "X" is the interface number for the Shared Ethernet Adapter

c)    "rmdev –l ent"X" – where "X" is the interface number for the Shared Ethernet Adapter. 

After the update I am told to do a "cfgmgr" to re-configure the SEA.

I will move the network traffic over to the other VIOS before I do the microcode upgrade.  

Can I then do the firmware/microcode update while the partitions are running without interfering with partition network traffic?  Or do I have to stop all the partitions first?

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Helle Koppang
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If you have SEA redundancy configured - which you should have for any SEA virtualizing I/O for systems hosting any important applications/services - you may simply set this SEA to standby mode, perform the upgrade and switch SEA back to its previous mode.

If you do not have IP address configured on SEA itself, you should not need to run "ifconfig detach", unless for some reason (like running tcpdump on SEA) you earlier put this interface in the "up" state.

Please also remeber that if you have multiport network cards it is very likely that updating firmware on one interface would affect some other ones (the "siblings").

Thank you for your reply Lech

Yes, I have redundancy on the SEA.  I move the traffic between the two VIO servers when I do other maintenance. 

Due to the redundant setup I was expecting that moving the traffic over to the other VIOS = setting the SEA to Standby mode, would make the microcode update possible without interfering with the network traffic to the partitions.  I just wanted to be 100% sure since this is, as you say, an important workload. 

Once again thank you, I can now proceed with the update. 

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Helle Koppang
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Lech already answered the question but I will add the link to the very good article by Chris Gibson https://techchannel.com/SMB/10/2023/vios-maintenance-using-hmc

Thank you Andrey,

This was a useful article.  Unfortunately it is no support for storage checks for IBM i yet. 

As I have been taking both VIOS down for maintenance several times lately, I know that we have (working) redundancy for storage and network on this server.  Because I am an IBM i person and not an AIX person, my main concern was the SEA because of the Detach and Remove of the SEA in the instructions.

Good morning,

for microcode updates I usually reboot the VIOS to diag-mode. With working redundancy that's not a problem and all adapters are free to update. After a reboot all adapters work normally again. 
And even though we do not want to hear it: Unix systems do like a restart once in a while ;-) 

best regards,

jens