Introduction to Virtual Network Configuration

The guest virtual network configuration provides flexibility in network configuration, allowing you to provide high availability, performance, and security to the guests running on the VM Host. The basic virtual network configuration is illustrated in Figure 8-1.

Figure 8-1 Virtual Network Configuration

The virtual network configuration consists of the following components:

VM Host physical network interface card (pNIC) — the physical network adapter, which may be configured with Auto Port Aggregation (APA). (For more information about APA, see the HP Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Support Guide.)
NOTE: Trunking software such as APA is supported only on the VM Host, not on the guest.
Guest virtual network interface card (vNIC) — the virtual network adapter, as recognized by the guest operating system.
Virtual switch (vswitch) — the virtual network switch maintained by the VM Host that is associated with a pNIC and can be allocated to one or more guests.

Using redundant pNICs and APA, you can ensure high availability of the guest networks and provide greater capacity for the VM Host system running many guests with network-intensive applications.

You can configure HP-UX VLANs for the guests. VLANs isolates broadcast and multicast traffic by determining which destinations should receive that traffic, thereby making better use of switch and end-station resources. With VLANs, broadcasts and multicasts go only to the intended nodes in the VLAN.

Introduction to Virtual Network Configuration

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