OpenSolaris Network Virtualization and Resource Control

OpenSolaris network virtualization and resource control is a set of OpenSolaris features, currently under development by Oracle as an open source project. OpenSolaris provides an internal network virtualization and quality of service scenario, implemented through the features of the OpenSolaris Crossbow umbrella project.

Major features of the Crossbow project include:

The Crossbow project software, combined with next generation network interfaces like xge and bge, enable network virtualization and resource control for a single system. By combining VNICs with features such as exclusive IP zones or the Sun xVM hypervisor, system administrators can run applications on separate virtual machines to improve performance and provide security. Resource management and flow control features provide bandwidth management and quality of service for packet flows on separate virtual machines. You can allocate bandwidth amounts and manage data flows not only for the physical network interface but also for any containers configured on the interface. The Crossbow resource control features enable increased system efficiency and the ability to limit the amount of bandwidth consumed by a process or virtual machine.

This section briefly describes the main features of the Crossbow network virtualization and resource control project. For further details on each feature, see the Crossbow Network Virtualization Architecture document available for download at the OpenSolaris Crossbow documentation page.

A VNIC is a pseudo network interface that is configured on top of a system's physical network adapter, also called a network interface (NIC). A physical interface can have more than one VNIC. Each VNIC operates like and appears to the system as a physical NIC. The individual VNIC is assigned a media access control address (MAC address), which can be configured to a value other than the default MAC address assigned to the physical NIC. You can use the resource control features of Crossbow to allocate separate bandwidths to the individual VNICs. Moreover, you can configure a virtual machine, such as an exclusive IP zone or xVM domain on top of a VNIC.

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