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Ethernet Configuration Window Overview

To view or change the virtual machine Ethernet configuration, select Ethernet in the left-hand pane of the Settings window. This will open the Ethernet configuration window. A sample Charon-SSP/4U window is shown below:

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Charon-SSP Ethernet configuration screen functions:

• To create a virtual network, click the Create Virtual Network button. For further details on creating, changing and removing a virtual network, see the section Host System Network Configuration. Do not use Charon-SSP Virtual Networks in combination with VMware ESXi vSwitch virtual network adapters. The vSwitch does not implement the STP protocol. This could lead to a layer‑2 loop disrupting normal network operation.

• To modify an existing virtual Ethernet adapter, select it from the list of configured devices and click on Edit (the edit button becomes visible once an interface has been selected).

• To remove an existing virtual Ethernet adapter, select the adapter from the list of configured devices and click the Remove button (the remove button becomes visible once an interface has been selected).

• To add a new virtual Ethernet adapter, click the Add button.

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Supported Adapter Models

The different Charon-SSP variants support different adapter models: Supported adapter models:

• Charon-SSP/4U: HME and QFE (4-port Fast Ethernet)
• Charon-SSP/4M: LE
• Charon-SSP/4V: BGE and QFE (4-port Fast Ethernet)

  Please note that for Charon-SSP/4U the first configured Ethernet interface in the Charon-SSP Manager represents the SPARC on-board device and must be of type HME. Hence, it will always show model HME even if type QFE has been selected.

QFE Ethernet Controller Information

Prerequisites for QFE controllers on Solaris:

After newly configuring one or more QFE Ethernet ports, boot the guest system with the reconfigure flag (boot <disk> -r). To support the QFE controller, Solaris needs the Sun Quad FastEthernet Adapter Driver (SUNWqfed). This package is bundled with the Solaris operating environment starting with Solaris 2.6 Hardware: 5/98. For earlier versions of Solaris, the vendor provided a driver CD with the adapter. After installing the driver, the interfaces should become visible in the ifconfig output upon entering the command ifconfig qfeX plumb. X denotes the interface number. Use prtconf to identify the correct interface numbers. To assign an address to the qfeX interface, create a /etc/hostname.qfeX file with the hostname for the interface and add the address for the hostname to /etc/hosts.

Please note that on Solaris 11, different commands are required to configure the interface:

# ipadm create-ip netX  
# ipadm create-addr -T static -a <ip-address>/<netmask> netX/v4

QFE configuration notes:

To configure a QFE Ethernet ports:

• Select QFE in the Add-on adapter model drop-down menu.

• For Charon-SSP/4U: configure the on-board Ethernet device. This will be of type HME even if adapter model QFE is selected.

• Configure the desired number of emulated QFE ports (the number does not have to be a multiple of four).

  If the guest system does not use the HME controller, you can create a virtual network without an external interface and assign one of the bridge interfaces to the controller as a kind of dummy interface. Alternatively, you could assign the localhost interface (lo) to the unused emulated Ethernet device.

Adding and Editing an Ethernet Adapter

After selecting to add or to edit an adapter, a window similar to the one below will open:

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The following parameters can be configured:

Interface:

Select the host attached Ethernet device to be connected to the virtual device. This field is a drop-down list of all the network adapters available on the host system. Important points:

• On a Charon-SSP AWS host, you can either use an internal bridge to create TAP interfaces that will then be used in the emulator configuration, or you can use a dedicated NIC. If a dedicated NIC is used, the MAC address of the emulated interface must be set to the MAC address of the NIC connected to the Charon host and the IP address of the guest system must be set to the private IP address allocated to the NIC by AWS.

• It is permitted to assign the localhost interface (lo) to an emulated device (if only a dummy device is required in the guest).

• Some options are configurable, but will not work with Charon-SSP AWS. They are listed here only for completeness:

  • Using the same physical device for multiple emulated Ethernet devices of the same instance.

  • Sharing a NIC between emulator and host.

  • Assigning the same physical interface to more than one Charon-SSP instance.

Set MAC Address:

To force the MAC address of the virtual Ethernet device to a specific value, select the checkbox and enter the address in groups of two-character hexadecimal digits, separated by a colon, e.g. 08:00:2b:aa:bb:cc.

 This option can be useful in cases where licensing is tied to a network adapter MAC address. It is required if a dedicated NIC is used on the Charon-SSP AWS instance.