VIPA Device Properties

Use to specify a virtual device. The Virtual IP Address (VIPA) removes the adapter as a single point of failure by providing an IP address that is associated with a stack without associating it with a specific physical network attachment. Because the virtual device exists only in software, it is always active and never experiences a physical failure.

A VIPA has no single physical network attachment associated with it. It is very useful to define VIPAs so that if a physical adapter loses its connection to the network, application traffic using the failed physical adapter can be rerouted over another interface to the network. To the network, the VIPA address appears to be one hop away from the TCP/IP address space's physical interfaces.

The network sends and receives datagrams to and from the physical interfaces to get to the VIPA address. To the routing network, a VIPA appears to be a host address indirectly attached to the z/OS. When a packet with a VIPA destination reaches the stack, the IP layer recognizes the address and passes it to the protocol layer in the stack.

You can find more detailed help on the following elements of this window:

Device name

Link name

IP address

Subnet mask