Performance counters for virtualized network interfaces of communications networks

A method of providing performance counters for virtualized network interfaces of communications networks, said method comprising:

• having a virtualized physical network interface of a communications network, wherein the virtualized physical network interface comprises a plurality of resources, including at least one physical port and a plurality of logical host channel adapters, said plurality of logical host channel adapters being coupled to a plurality of logical partitions of a computing environment;
• providing performance counters for at least multiple resources of the plurality of resources, wherein the providing a performance counter for a particular resource of the multiple resources is based on whether the particular resource is a physical port or a logical host channel adapter, wherein one type of performance counter is provided for a physical port and a different type of performance counter is provided for a logical host channel adapter, wherein the providing comprises:
• providing at least one dedicated hardware performance counter to the at least one physical port;
• and
• providing one or more programmable counters for the plurality of logical host channel adapters, said one or more programmable counters to be shared by the plurality of logical host channel adapters, and wherein at least one programmable counter of the one or more programmable counters is associated with a logical host channel adapter of the plurality of logical host channel adapters in response to a request, during processing, for performance data, rather than being dedicated to the logical host channel adapter.