Use Case: Combining Link Aggregations and VLAN Configurations

This section provides an example that shows how to create a combination of network configurations that uses link aggregations and VLANs over which IP interfaces are created. Articles that present other networking scenarios can be found at http://www.oracle.com/us/sun/index.htm.

In the following example, a system that uses four NICs must be configured to be a router for eight separate subnets. To attain this objective, eight links will be configured, one for each subnet. First, a link aggregation is created on all four NICs. This untagged link becomes the default untagged subnet for the network to which the default route points.

Then VLAN interfaces are configured over the link aggregation for the other subnets. The subnets are named based on a color-coded scheme. Accordingly, the VLAN names are likewise named to correspond to their respective subnets. The final configuration consists of eight links for the eight subnets: one untagged link, and seven tagged VLAN links. The example begins with verifying whether IP interfaces already exist on the datalinks. These interfaces must be deleted before the datalinks can be combined into an aggregation.

The administrator begins by removing any IP interfaces that have been configured over the datalinks.

# ipadm show-if
IFNAME    CLASS      STATE   ACTIVE   OVER
lo0       loopback   ok      yes      --
net0      ip         ok      yes      --
net1      ip         ok      yes      --
net2      ip         ok      yes      --
net3      ip         ok      yes      --

# ipadm delete-ip net0
# ipadm delete-ip net1
# ipadm delete-ip net2
# ipadm delete-ip net3

Then the administrator creates the link aggregation default0.

# dladm create-aggr -P L2,L3 -l net0 -l net1 -l net2 -l net3 default0

# dladm show-link
LINK        CLASS      MTU  STATE    BRIDGE     OVER
net0        phys      1500  up       --         --
net1        phys      1500  up       --         --
net2        phys      1500  up       --         --
net3        phys      1500  up       --         --
default0    aggr      1500  up       --         net0 net1 net2 net3

Next, the administrator creates the VLANs over default0.

# dladm create-vlan -v 2 -l default0 orange0
# dladm create-vlan -v 3 -l default0 green0
# dladm create-vlan -v 4 -l default0 blue0
# dladm create-vlan -v 5 -l default0 white0
# dladm create-vlan -v 6 -l default0 yellow0
# dladm create-vlan -v 7 -l default0 red0
# dladm create-vlan -v 8 -l default0 cyan0

# dladm show-link
LINK        CLASS      MTU  STATE    BRIDGE     OVER
net0        phys      1500  up       --         --
net1        phys      1500  up       --         --
net2        phys      1500  up       --         --
net3        phys      1500  up       --         --
default0    aggr      1500  up       --         net0 net1 net2 net3
orange0     vlan      1500  up       --         default0
green0      vlan      1500  up       --         default0
blue0       vlan      1500  up       --         default0
white0      vlan      1500  up       --         default0
yellow0     vlan      1500  up       --         default0
red0        vlan      1500  up       --         default0
cyan0       vlan      1500  up       --         default0

# dladm show-vlan
LINK          VID   OVER        FLAGS
orange0         2   default0    -----
green0          3   default0    -----
blue0           4   default0    -----
white0          5   default0    -----
yellow0         6   default0    -----
red0            7   default0    -----
cyan0           8   default0    -----

Finally, the administrator creates IP interfaces over the VLAN links and assigns IP addresses to the interfaces.

# ipadm create-ip orange0
# ipadm create-ip green0
# ipadm create-ip blue0
# ipadm create-ip white0
# ipadm create-ip yellow0
# ipadm create-ip red0
# ipadm create-ip cyan0

# ipadm create-addr -a address orange0
# ipadm create-addr -a address green0
# ipadm create-addr -a address blue0
# ipadm create-addr -a address white0
# ipadm create-addr -a address yellow0
# ipadm create-addr -a address red0
# ipadm create-addr -a address cyan0