System Administration Guide: Virtualization Using the Solaris Operating System

IP Network Multipathing in Exclusive-IP Zones

IP network multipathing (IPMP) provides physical interface failure detection and transparent network access failover for a system with multiple interfaces on the same IP link. IPMP also provides load spreading of packets for systems with multiple interfaces.

The data-link configuration is done in the global zone. First, multiple data-link interfaces are assigned to a zone using zonecfg. The multiple data-link interfaces must be attached to the same IP subnet. IPMP can then be configured from within the exclusive-IP zone by the zone administrator.