Virtual Switch

A virtual switch (vsw) is a component running in a service domain and managed by the virtual switch driver. A virtual switch can be connected to some guest domains to enable network communications between those domains. In addition, if the virtual switch is also associated with a physical network interface, network communication is permitted between guest domains and the physical network over the physical network interface.

Assigning a virtual network device to a domain creates an implicit dependency on the domain providing the virtual switch. You can view these dependencies or view domains that depend on this virtual switch by using the ldm list-dependencies command. See Listing Domain I/O Dependencies.

In an Oracle Solaris 11 service domain, do not use the virtual switch as a regular network interface. If the virtual switch is connected to a physical network interface, communication with the service domain is possible by using this physical interface. If configured without a physical interface, you can enable communication with the service domain by using an etherstub as the network device (net-dev) that is connected with a VNIC.

Although the virtual switch appears as a physical network device (vswN) in dladm show-phys output, you cannot configure it as a network device in Oracle Solaris 11 because this capability has been deprecated in Oracle Solaris 11 and certain key features are inoperable.

To determine which network device to use as the back-end device for the virtual switch, search for the physical network device in the dladm show-phys output or use the ldm list-netdev command to list the network devices for logical domains.

You can add a virtual switch to a domain, set options for a virtual switch, and remove a virtual switch by using the ldm add-vsw, ldm set-vsw, and ldm remove-vsw commands, respectively. See the ldm(8) man page.

When you create a virtual switch on a VLAN tagged instance of a NIC or an aggregation, you must specify the NIC (nxge0), the aggregation (aggr3), or the vanity name (net0) as the value of the net-dev property when you use the ldm add-vsw or ldm set-vsw command.

Note:

Starting with the Oracle Solaris 11.2 SRU 1 OS, you can dynamically update the net-dev property value by using the ldm set-vsw command. In previous Oracle Solaris OS releases, using the ldm set-vsw command to update the net-dev property value in the primary domain causes the primary domain to enter a delayed reconfiguration.

You cannot add a virtual switch on top of an InfiniBand IP-over-InfiniBand (IPoIB) network device. Although the ldm add-vsw and ldm add-vnet commands appear to succeed, no data will flow because these devices transport IP packets by means of the InfiniBand transport layer. The virtual switch only supports Ethernet as a transport layer. Note that IPoIB and Ethernet-over-InfiniBand (EoIB) are unsupported back ends for virtual switches.

The following command creates a virtual switch on a physical network adapter called net0:

primary# ldm add-vsw net-dev=net0 primary-vsw0 primary

The following example uses the ldm list-netdev -b command to show only the valid virtual switch back-end devices for the svcdom service domain.

primary# ldm list-netdev -b svcdom
DOMAIN
svcdom

NAME             CLASS MEDIA STATE   SPEED OVER   LOC
----             ----- ----- -----   ----- ----   ---
net0             PHYS  ETHER up      10000 ixgbe0 /SYS/MB/RISER1/PCIE
net1             PHYS  ETHER unknown 0     ixgbe1 /SYS/MB/RISER1/PCIE4
net2             ESTUB ETHER unknown 0     --     --
net3             ESTUB ETHER unknown 0     --     --
ldoms-estub.vsw0 ESTUB ETHER unknown 0     --     --