The virtual OptiConnect feature provides high-speed interpartition communication within a managed system. The Virtual OptiConnect feature emulates external OptiConnect hardware by providing a virtual bus between logical partitions.
The virtual OptiConnect feature can be used only for communications between i5/OS® logical partitions on IBM System i5™ or eServer™ i5 models. If you must enable communications with AIX® or Linux® logical partitions, or if you are using i5/OS on an IBM System p5™ or eServer p5 model, use virtual Ethernet instead of the virtual OptiConnect feature.
To use the virtual OptiConnect feature on a logical partition, you must install OptiConnect for OS/400® (a priced optional feature) on each i5/OS logical partition that is to use virtual OptiConnect. If you use the Hardware Management Console (HMC) to partition your managed system, you must also check the partition profile properties for each i5/OS logical partition that is to use virtual OptiConnect and ensure that the Use virtual OptiConnect option is selected on the OptiConnect tab. For more information on changing partition profile properties, see Changing partition profile properties.
You can use both the virtual OptiConnect feature and the High-Speed Link (HSL) OptiConnect feature on the same i5/OS logical partition. If multiple paths are available between i5/OS logical partitions, the OptiConnect software automatically selects the virtual OptiConnect path instead of the HSL OptiConnect external path.
You can use the virtual OptiConnect feature without any additional hardware requirements.
For more information about OptiConnect, refer to OptiConnect.