Nicolas Droux writes: > James Carlson wrote: > > > When do I move VNICs around and what do I need and expect? I think > > this document should work through some actual usage scenarios and then > > come up with usable interfaces based on that, because the current > > interfaces seem to be self-referential: they do what they do because > > that's what they do. The "force" flag seems particularly problematic, > > as it indicates that things the administrator should be able to do > > aren't doable. > > <snip> > > We need the ability to assign a factory MAC address or fail the > operation is none is available.
The question I'm asking here is: "why?" Under what circumstances does it make sense to provide this failure mode for administrators? How does it help rather than hinder? That's what I'd like to see in the document -- some explanation that shows what administrative problem is being addressed by the functionality that's provided. One way to do that is by providing usage scenarios. (Preferably ones that don't assume the outcome. I.e., not "the user wants to make sure configuration of vnic0 fails if a factory address in slot 2 isn't available, so ...") > I'm fine for not having a "force" option during the move operation. This > means that if a VNIC was created with a "factory" option, and the > destination NIC doesn't have a factory MAC address available, then the > move will fail. It also means that if a user explicitly specified a > factory MAC address slot, the move will fail. Unless there's some reason to believe that factory address slot numbers are allocated in a common way across NICs, I think that moving a VNIC and preserving the slot number is a sketchy idea. It's akin to moving a zone from one machine to another and expecting that "qfe1" will be the same interface on the same network on the destination machine. It might be, with sufficient advance planning. It probably isn't though. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
