Maximizing Virtual Network Performance

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You can achieve high transfer rates for guest and external networks and for guest-to-guest communications when you configure your platform and the domains as described in this section. The virtual network stack introduces support for large segment offload (LSO), which produces high TCP performance without requiring the use of jumbo frames.

Hardware and Software Requirements

Meet the following requirements to maximize the network performance for your domains:

Hardware requirements. These performance improvements are available starting with the SPARC T4 server.
System firmware requirements. These SPARC systems must run the latest system firmware. See Fully Qualified System Firmware Versions in Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.5 Installation Guide.
Oracle Solaris OS requirements. Ensure that the service domain and guest domain run the following Oracle Solaris OS versions.

Note - Running the fully qualified Oracle Solaris OS version provides you with access to new features. See Fully Qualified Oracle Solaris OS Versions in Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.5 Installation Guide.
- Service domain. At least the Oracle Solaris 11.1 SRU 9 OS or the Oracle Solaris 10 OS with the 150031-03 patch.
- Guest domain. At least the Oracle Solaris 11.1 SRU 9 OS or the Oracle Solaris 10 OS with the 150031-03 patch.
CPU and memory requirements. Ensure that you assign sufficient CPU and memory resources to the service domain and the guest domains.
- Service domain. Because the service domain acts as a data proxy for the guest domains, assign at least 2 CPU cores and at least 16 Gbytes of memory to the service domain.
- Guest domain. Configure each guest domain to be able to drive at least 10-Gbps performance. Assign at least 2 CPU cores and at least 4 Gbytes of memory to each guest domain.

Configuring Your Domains to Maximize the Performance of Your Virtual Network

In previous versions of Oracle VM Server for SPARC and the Oracle Solaris OS, you could improve your network performance by configuring jumbo frames. This configuration is no longer required and unless required for another reason, using the standard MTU value of 1500 for your service and guest domains is best.

To achieve the improved networking performance, set the extended-mapin-space property to on for the service domain and the guest domains. This is the default behavior.

primary# ldm set-domain extended-mapin-space=on domain-name

To check the extended-mapin-space property value, run the following command:

primary# ldm list -l domain-name |grep extended-mapin
extended-mapin-space=on

Note - A change to the extended-mapin-space property value triggers a delayed reconfiguration on the primary domain. This situation requires a primary domain reboot. You also must first stop the guest domains before you change this property value.