The InfiniBand-based Interconnect includes the ability to define logical subsets of the physical Interconnect called secure fabrics. A secure fabric enables you to define a set of partition images that can communicate with each other, but they cannot communicate with other partition images; and other partition images that are not part of the secure fabric cannot communicate with partition images that are part of the secure fabric. In essence, secure fabrics divide the physical Interconnect into multiple independent fabrics. Secure fabrics are similar to Ethernet virtual LANs (VLANs).

A given partition image can be associated with zero, one, or many secure fabrics. The partition’s operating system can interact with each secure fabric that the partition is associated with.