Detaching NICs

All requests to detach system components that contain NICs are first checked to ensure that connectivity can be preserved. For instance, by default you cannot detach a NIC that is not in an IPMP group. You also cannot detach a NIC that contains the only functioning interfaces in an IPMP group. However, if you must remove the system component, you can override this behavior by using the -f option of cfgadm, as explained in the cfgadm(1M) man page.

If the checks are successful, the data addresses associated with the detached NIC fail over to a functioning NIC in the same group, as if the NIC being detached had failed. When the NIC is detached, all test addresses on the NIC's interfaces are unconfigured. Then, the NIC is unplumbed from the system. If any of these steps fail, or if the DR of other hardware on the same system component fails, then the previous configuration is restored to its original state. You should receive a status message regarding this event. Otherwise, the detach request completes successfully. You can remove the component from the system. No existing connections are disrupted.