You can configure more than one VNIC on a physical device. Thus, you can create a multinode network within a single system. The network would consist of virtual servers (zones) that are connected in a network within a single operating system instance.
The following figure shows an example of a virtual network setup in an Oracle Solaris host.
Figure 5 Virtual Network Setup
The procedures in this section are based on the following assumptions:
The virtual network on the system consists of three zones. The procedures in this section are based on the following zone configurations:
The first zone zone1 is created as a new zone with an anet resource. For information, see How to Configure a Zone for the Virtual Network.
The second zone zone2 already exists on the system and needs to be reconfigured to use a VNIC. For information, see How to Reconfigure a Zone to Use a VNIC.
The third zone zone3 already exists on the system. You need to temporarily create the VNIC zone3/v3 in zone3 from the global zone. For information, see Creating VNICs Directly for Zones.
The system's physical interface is configured with the IP address 192.0.2.20.
The router's IP address is 192.0.2.25.
When building the virtual network, some steps are performed in a global zone and some are performed in a non-global zone. For clarity, the prompts in the examples after each step indicate in which zone a specific command is issued. However, the actual path that the prompts display might vary depending on the prompts specified for your system.
For a demonstration of configuring a virtual network, see Configuring a Virtual Network in Oracle Solaris - Part 1 (https://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/tutorial/solaris/11/VirtualDemo_Part1/VirtualDemo_Part1.htm) and Configuring a Virtual Network in Oracle Solaris - Part 2 (https://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/tutorial/solaris/11/VirtualDemo_Part2/VirtualDemo_Part2.htm).