Here are some tips for sizing the VIO Server that I have discovered along the way.

 

Virtual Ethernet and SEA Adapters use CPU resources on the VIO server.  The more network bridging the SEA adapters do, the more CPU resources the VIO Server will need.

Virtual SCSI and NPIV use memory resources on the VIO server.  Memory is used to map IO pages to and from the Client LPARs.

Base VIO 1.5 install requires at least 768MB of memory.

Base VIO 2.1 install requires at least 1024MB of memory.

Base VIO 2.2 install requires at least 1024MB of memory.

 

My recommendations from expirence working with large enterprise businesses.  I would rather oversize my VIO Servers initially, and then review them from time to time and adjust the resources as needed.

VIO 1.5 - These are built with 4GB of memory.

VIO 2.1 - These are built with 6GB of memory.

VIO 2.2 - These are built with 8GB of memory.

Each Virtual SCSI adapter requires 4MB of memory.

Each Gigabit Ethernet adapter requires 4MB of memory if MTU size is 1500

Each Gigabit Ethernet adapter requires 16MB of memory if MTU size is 9000.

Each Virtual Ethernet adapter requires 6MB of memory.

Network MBUF pools require 40MB per processor in the VIOS.