Enabling Networking Between the Oracle Solaris 10 Service Domain and Other Domains

Language:

By default, networking between an Oracle Solaris 10 service domain and other domains in the system is disabled. Because networking is not enabled by default in the Oracle Solaris 10 OS, you must enable networking by configuring the virtual switch device as a network device. The virtual switch can either replace the underlying physical device (nxge0 in this example) as the primary interface or be configured as an additional network interface in the domain.

Guest domains can automatically communicate with the Oracle Solaris 10 service domain as long as the corresponding network back-end device is configured in the same virtual LAN or virtual network.

How to Configure the Virtual Switch as the Primary Interface

Note - Perform the following procedure from the Oracle Solaris 10 service domain's console, as the procedure could temporarily disrupt network connectivity to the domain.

If necessary, you can configure the virtual switch as well as the physical network device. In this case, create the virtual switch as in Step 2, and do not delete the physical device (skip Step 3). You must then configure the virtual switch with either a static IP address or a dynamic IP address. You can obtain a dynamic IP address from a DHCP server. For additional information and an example of this case, see Configuring a Virtual Switch and the Service Domain for NAT and Routing.

Print the addressing information for all interfaces.
```
# ifconfig -a
```
Configure the virtual switch network interface.
```
# ifconfig vsw0 plumb
```
Remove the physical interface for the device that is assigned to the virtual switch (net-dev).
```
# ifconfig nxge0 down unplumb
```
To migrate properties of the physical network device (nxge0) to the virtual switch device (vsw0), do one of the following:
- If networking is configured by using a static IP address, reuse the IP address and netmask of nxge0 for the virtual switch.
```
# ifconfig vsw0 IP-of-nxge0 netmask netmask-of-nxge0 broadcast + up
```
- If networking is configured by using DHCP, enable DHCP for the virtual switch.
```
# ifconfig vsw0 dhcp start
```

Make the required configuration file modifications to make this change permanent.

# mv /etc/hostname.nxge0 /etc/hostname.vsw0
# mv /etc/dhcp.nxge0 /etc/dhcp.vsw0