crossbow discuss - Jan 2009 - virtual switch with more than one phyical nic?

Hi.  Can a virtual switch have more than one physical NIC?

Or, can a VNIC have more than one NIC? (this is the same
question, I think)?

emike

They are a bit different questions.

E. Mike Durbin - Sun Microsystems wrote:
> Hi.  Can a virtual switch have more than one physical NIC?
I am assuming you mean the etherstub here which allows
creation of VNICs on top which have connectivity amongst
themselves. As such, you can connect a physical NIC to it
yet. You can either create a zone which does routing
and assign a VNIC on etherstub to that zone and another
physical NIC (or VNIC on the pNIC) to that zone and
enable forwarding. This gives L3 connectivity today.

We also have a L2 bridge project which should allow
you to connect the pNIC/VNIC to the etherstub.
> Or, can a VNIC have more than one NIC? (this is the same
> question, I think)?
Not directly. A VNIC is on a single pNIC but you can
put two pNICs in a link aggregation and create a VNIC
on top of aggr thus getting a VNIC over two pNICs (in
indirect way).

Cheers,
Sunay


-- 
Sunay Tripathi
Distinguished Engineer
Solaris Core Operating System
Sun MicroSystems Inc.

Solaris Networking:     http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/networking
Project Crossbow:       http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/crossbow