Configuring Network Services to Support IPv6

The following typical IPv4 network services in the current Oracle Solaris release are IPv6 ready:

• sendmail

• NFS

• HTTP (Apache 2 releases or Orion)

• DNS

• LDAP

The IMAP mail service is for IPv4 only.

Nodes that are configured for IPv6 can run IPv4 services. When you turn on IPv6, not all services accept IPv6 connections. Services that have been ported to IPv6 will accept a connection. Services that have not been ported to IPv6 continue to work with the IPv4 half of the protocol stack.

Some issues can arise after you upgrade services to IPv6. For details, see Problems After Upgrading Services to IPv6 in Troubleshooting Network Issues.

How to Prepare Network Services for IPv6 Support

1. Update the following network services to support IPv6:

   • Mail servers

   • NIS servers

   • NFS

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     Note - LDAP supports IPv6 without requiring IPv6-specific configuration tasks.

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2. Verify that your firewall hardware is IPv6 ready.

   Refer to the appropriate firewall-related documentation for instructions.

3. Verify that other services on your network have been ported to IPv6.

   For more information, refer to marketing collateral and associated documentation for the software.

4. If your site deploys the following services, make sure that you have taken the appropriate measures for these services:

   • Firewalls

     Consider strengthening the policies that are in place for IPv4 to support IPv6. For more security considerations, see Security Considerations for the IPv6 Implementation.

   • Mail

     In the MX records for DNS, consider adding the IPv6 address of your mail server.

   • DNS

     For DNS-specific considerations, see How to Prepare DNS for IPv6 Support.

   • IPQoS

     Use the same Diffserv policies on a host that were used for IPv4. For more information, see Classifier Module in Managing IP Quality of Service in Oracle Solaris 11.1.

5. Audit any network services that are offered by a node prior to converting that node to IPv6.

How to Prepare DNS for IPv6 Support

The current Oracle Solaris release supports DNS resolution on both the client side and the server side. Do the following to prepare DNS services for IPv6.

For more information that is related to DNS support for IPv6, refer to Working With Naming and Directory Services in Oracle Solaris 11.1.

1. Ensure that the DNS server that performs recursive name resolution is dual-stacked (IPv4 and IPv6) or for IPv4 only.
2. On the DNS server, populate the DNS database with relevant IPv6 database AAAA records in the forward zone.

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   Note - Servers that run multiple critical services require special attention. Ensure that the network is working properly. Also ensure that all critical services are ported to IPv6. Then, add the server's IPv6 address to the DNS database.

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3. Add the associated PTR records for the AAAA records into the reverse zone.
4. Add either IPv4 only data, or both IPv6 and IPv4 data into the NS record that describes zones.