Configuring IPMP Over DLMP in a Virtual Environment for Enhancing Network Performance and Availability
You can configure IPMP group over a DLMP aggregation. However, while creating IPMP group over a DLMP aggregation, you must make sure that none of the physical network connections of the underlying interfaces of the IPMP group are part of the same DLMP aggregation. IPMP groups can be created from interfaces that are coming from different DLMP aggregations as shown in Configuration of IPMP Over DLMP in Zones and Configuration of IPMP Over DLMP in Oracle VM Server for SPARC. This is because of the difference in the nature of load spreading provided by both the DLMP aggregation and the IPMP and the chances of redundancy and conflicts. The load spreading of DLMP is based on L2 (MAC) address, which generally spreads its VNICs evenly across all the ports, whereas the load spreading of IPMP is on a per-connection basis generally identified by L4 five tuples (local and remote IP addresses, local and remote ports, and the protocol).
You must not create an IPMP group over DLMP aggregated datalinks in the same host or in the same Oracle VM server for SPARC since such a creation can either group the component links of DLMP directly by using IPMP group or create VNICs on top of the DLMP and then create the IPMP over these VNICs. This results in high availability and load spreading by both DLMP and IPMP over the same interfaces, which is redundant and can be prone to errors. The configuration is simplified by disallowing the creation of IPMP over DLMP directly.
In the virtual environments the creation of IPMP group over interfaces coming from non overlapping DLMP aggregations can offer better network performance, with the high availability offered by the DLMP aggregation at the L2 layer and the load spreading by the IPMP at the L3 layer across multiple switches. The following figures shows example configuration of IPMP in the non global zone over a DLMP datalink in the global zone and IPMP in the guest domain of the Oracle VM Server for SPARC over a DLMP datalink in the service domain.
Figure 6 Configuration of IPMP Over DLMP in Zones
Figure 7 Configuration of IPMP Over DLMP in Oracle VM Server for SPARC
For information about how to configure DLMP and IPMP, see Creating a Link Aggregation and Configuring IPMP Groups in Administering TCP/IP Networks, IPMP, and IP Tunnels in Oracle Solaris 11.3. For information about Oracle VM Serve for SPARC, see Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.3 Administration Guide.