Network virtualization in Oracle Solaris includes the following key building blocks:
VNICs
When a datalink such as a physical NIC or a link aggregation needs to be shared by multiple VMs or zones, you can carve it up into virtual NICs or VNICs. These VNICs appear on the system as any other NIC and are administered exactly the same way as a physical NIC. Each VNIC has its own MAC address that you can configure with additional attributes, such as a VLAN ID, thus enabling the VNIC to be easily integrated into an existing network infrastructure. For higher availability, you can also create VNICs on top of link aggregations, which you can then assign individual bandwidth limits, thereby enabling them to consume just their assigned share of bandwidth. VNICs have a rich set of configurable features. For more information, see Building Virtual Networks in Managing Network Virtualization and Network Resources in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .
Virtual switching
The Oracle Solaris virtual network stack includes built-in virtual switching capabilities that simulate the capabilities of a physical network switch. You can use virtual switches within a single machine to enable zones and VMs to communicate with each other. Virtual switches are automatically instantiated when multiple VNICs are created on top the same datalink. In addition to being able to create VNICs on top of physical NICs or aggregations, you can also create virtual switches on top of an etherstub. This capability enables you to create fully virtualized networks that are independent of the physical hardware. For more information, see Configuring the Components of a Virtual Network in Managing Network Virtualization and Network Resources in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .
Elastic Virtual Switch (EVS) feature of Oracle Solaris
The EVS feature is an L2 technology that expands network virtualization capabilities by enabling you to directly manage virtual switches. You can create EVS switches to deploy multiple virtual networks that span multiple hosts, within either a multi-tenant cloud environment or a datacenter. You can also optionally configure an EVS switch with virtual ports, IP subnets, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Additionally, you can connect any Oracle Solaris VNIC to an EVS switch or a virtual port. Such VNICs automatically inherit their network configuration from EVS. This capability enables you to more cleanly separate the network configuration from a zone or VM configuration.
You manage and observe EVS switches through a central controller. The elastic virtual switches are then automatically deployed on the various hosts, as needed. Hence, the term elastic is used to describe these switches. The EVS architecture is tightly integrated with various other network virtualization features, including the VXLAN feature. See Chapter 3, Configuring Virtual Networks by Using Virtual Extensible Local Area Networks, in Managing Network Virtualization and Network Resources in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .Together, you can use these two features to create a large number of virtual networks. Also, because EVS switches are transport-agnostic, you can use them with other types of network fabrics, such as traditional VLANs.
EVS switches are also supported in a zones environment. An anet VNIC resource can connect to an EVS switch by using the appropriate zonecfg properties. See Creating and Using Oracle Solaris Zones and the zonecfg (1M) man page for more information.
For more information about the EVS feature, see Chapter 6, Administering Elastic Virtual Switches, in Managing Network Virtualization and Network Resources in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .
The EVS feature introduces new administrative commands. For more information, see the evsadm (1M) and evsstat (1M) man pages. See also the dladm (1M) man page.