Hi,
I could be wrong about this, but my understanding of the VSW
implementation is that it can only be attached to one physical NIC,
VNIC (with Crossbow), or Link Aggregation to run upon. As a result,
there shouldn't be an issue of a loop from that end. Now in the case
of using IPMP in the guest domains where you have two separate VSWs
that are attached to their own physical NIC on the same network, you
won't have a loop either as the MAC addresses of those physical links
are different. So again, no looping happening.
Now is it possible to connect multiple VSWs together? Yes it is, but
it requires an I/O domain to act as a router between them for traffic
to be routed. Otherwise, it would be no different than a multi-homed
server connected to multiple networks, but providing no routing
between them.
It is important to understand that the VSW is a dumb layer-2 switch,
it's like going to Best Buy and getting a cheap Linksys, Netgear, or
DLink switch. The big difference is that you're not limited on the
number of ports, no special management features, and it's at the
speed of memory and LDCs. So unlike VMware which tries to emulated a
switch with ports and settings, VSWs are much simpler.
If you want to understand it better, probably a good place to look is
the UltraSPARC Hypervisor API document on our community site which
talks about some of the low-level functionality happening there.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Octave J. Orgeron
Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant
Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com
E-Mail: [email protected]
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
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*From:* "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
*To:* [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]
*Sent:* Mon, October 4, 2010 6:28:46 AM
*Subject:* [ldoms-discuss] Network related questions concerning vsw
spanning tree
Hi there thank you for your answers below. Still some questions:
My concern regarding virtual switches is the fact that from a network
perspective I don’t have control, but I am responsible if network
attached servers cause network issues.
Primary concern is the fact that in theory it is possible to create
layer-2 loops with vswitches. Therefore I would like to know from
Oracle/Sun what measures they have taken in order to avoid the
creation of Layer-2 loops with virtual switches. I would like to have
some documentation of Sun regarding the virtual network
implementation within T5240. Please see the splendid vmware
documentation reqarding “virtual networking concepts” for example.
Here my requirements for virtual switch implementations within servers:
-virtual switch isolation is required. It should not be possible to
connect 2 or more virtual switches in the same server with each
other. What mechanisms are in place on the T5240 to prevent this?
-suppose that a virtual switch has 2 fysical uplinks, what mechanisms
are in place to prevent the forwarding of a frame coming in on
uplink1 to uplink2 (thereby creating a layer-2 loop)
It would be apriciated, for our network guys to get a satisfied
answer for this.
Thanks in adv
Anne Adema
Martin Qoute:”
*Hi,
For a PoC we're running with LDOMs 1.3 and LDOMs 2.0 I have some
questions that hopefully someone can help me with. We're using
Solaris 10 9/10 (u9) for control/service domain and guest domains.
1. Does the vswitch participate in Spanning-tree?
If yes, can this be disabled?
Any differences for LDOMs 1.3 and 2.0 here?*
*No idea, I never observed spanning- tree behaviour of vswitches*
*
*
*
2. How can the bandwidth that a VNIC consumes be limited?
(Case: we're creating multiple non-global zones in 1 LDOM guest and
want to prevent that one non-global zone can take up all bandwidth
for a
single VNIC).*
*OTOH no way to do this in an I/O domain only without Crossbow. *
*
*
*
3. How can we configure "IP Multipathing" for the vswitch with LDOMs 1.3?
I know LDOMs 2.0 has this capability...*
*Question: do you want to connect a guest redundantly to the outside
world or do you want to connect whole vswitch redundantly to the
outside world?*
*
*
*
4. Using VLAN tagging on the vswitch, van I assign one VLAN to a VNIC
in a
guest domain? So that there's a VLAN between the vswitch and the guest,
accessible as a VNIC from the guest?*
*Yes. IIRC possible since v1.2, described in the slides on LDOMs
under https://sunspace.sfbay.sun.com/x/c9VnDg** (sorry only
accessible from the Oracle intranet)*
“
*Stefan Quote”:*
* *
*1. Does the vswitch participate in Spanning-tree?
If yes, can this be disabled?
Any differences for LDOMs 1.3 and 2.0 here?*
*No idea, I never observed spanning- tree behaviour of vswitches*
* *
*It doesn't have to. It can not be configured to create loops, so we
don't need to spanning-tree to protect against them. Externally, it
appears as a normal ethernet port, so the real switches at the other
end of the cable can do their spanning tree stuff, if they're so
inclined.
Turning it off completly should'nt be supported on any switch. I
assume you mean turning off the spanning tree checking before taking
a port online. Cisco switches used to do this, and you could turn
this off, as in "go online first, check later, then, if loop
detected, take port offline". This would speed up the onlining of
ports, but not disable spanning tree checking completely.
*
*2. How can the bandwidth that a VNIC consumes be limited?
(Case: we're creating multiple non-global zones in 1 LDOM guest and
want to prevent that one non-global zone can take up all bandwidth
for a
single VNIC).*
*OTOH no way to do this in an I/O domain only without Crossbow. *
* *
*you'll need crossbow for that, as martin already said”*
* *
* *
* *
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