Configure IPMP Interface Solaris 11 in easy steps

To provide a redundancy network connection, solaris11 provide IPMP feature which combine more than one ethernet physical connection in to one logical interface as known as ip network multipathing. IPMP is layer 3 protocol which has feature as failure detection, transparent access failover, and packet load spreading.  

What is benefit when you use a ipmp interface?. There was an unexpected situation on network, like network interface is suddenly unconnected, disabled, failure, etc which impacted to your network connection becomes unavailable. When you face with the situations in one physical/logical interface only, it will drive you to be disconnected from network. 

It's difference when you have IPMP. IPMP is a group of network interface combined in to one logical interface. When one interface in the group has failure / disabled / broken / physically disconnected, you still connected with comfortable. Your application / service is not impacted. The simply way to configure ipmp interface :



1. Create ipmp interface

# ipadm create-ipmp ipmp0
2.  Create network interface that physically cable connected, in my case is net0 and net1
    

# ipadm create-ip net0
    # ipadm create-ip net1
3. Check status of net0 and net1 interface status
    

# dladm show-link
LINK                CLASS     MTU    STATE    OVER
net10               phys      1500   unknown  --
net3                phys      1500   unknown  --
net2                phys      1500   unknown  --
net11               phys      1500   unknown  --
net1                phys      1500   up       --
net0                phys      1500   up       --
net9                phys      1500   unknown  --
net7                phys      1500   unknown  --
net5                phys      1500   unknown  --
net4                phys      1500   unknown  --
net8                phys      1500   unknown  --
net6                phys      1500   unknown  --

4. Add net0 and net1 to ipmp group
    

# ipadm add -i net0 -i net1 ipmp0
5. Create ip address for ipmp0 
    

# ipadm create-addr -a 192.168.1.10/24 ipmp0
6. Set net1 as standby interface
    

# ipadm set-ifprop -p standby=on -m ip net1
7. Check interface status, confirm net0 and net1 has groupname ipmp0
    

# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
ipmp0: flags=108001000843 mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 192.168.1.10 netmask ffffff80 broadcast 192.168.1.255        groupname ipmp0
net0: flags=100001000843 mtu 1500 index 3
        inet 0.0.0.0 netmask ff000000
        groupname ipmp0
        ether b0:99:28:9d:31:18
net1: flags=100061000843 mtu 1500 index 4
        inet 0.0.0.0 netmask ff000000
        groupname ipmp0
        ether b0:99:28:9d:31:19
lo0: flags=2002000849 mtu 8252 index 1
        inet6 ::1/128
ipmp0: flags=128002000840 mtu 1500 index 2
        inet6 ::/0
        groupname ipmp0
net0: flags=120002000841 mtu 1500 index 3
        inet6 ::/0
        groupname ipmp0
        ether b0:99:28:9d:31:18
net1: flags=120062000841 mtu 1500 index 4
        inet6 ::/0
        groupname ipmp0
        ether b0:99:28:9d:31:19
8. Check ipmp interface status
    

# ipmpstat -g
GROUP       GROUPNAME   STATE     FDT       INTERFACES
ipmp0       ipmp0       ok        --        net1 net0
9. Set default gw for ipmp0 
    

# route -p add default 192.168.1.1
10. Test ping to gateway or other difference segment
11. Test with unplug network cable of net1 or net0 while ping test

/* EOF */