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Ethernet Configuration Window Overview

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

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.

• To remove an existing virtual Ethernet adapter, select the adapter from the list of configured devices and click the Remove button.

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

Supported Adapter Models

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

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

  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.

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:

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:

• The interface must allow promiscuous mode unless the configuration described below (yellow box) is used.

• It is permitted to assign the localhost interface (lo) to an emulated device (if the device will not be used by the guest).

• It is also permitted to add the same physical device to multiple emulated Ethernet devices of the same instance. However, this is not recommended for performance reasons.

• Sharing a NIC between emulator and host (not recommended for performance reasons) is possible but requires promiscuous mode and the MAC addresses of host and emulated system to be different (normally this is automatically taken care of by Charon-SSP assigning a locally administered MAC address to the guest system).

• VMware and locally administered MAC addresses: VMware has several parameters to protect the environment from forged MAC addresses (e.g., the forged transmits and the address change parameters). If a MAC address for a Charon instance that is different from the host NIC MAC address is to be set and used, these parameters must allow such a configuration.

• Assigning the same physical interface to more than one Charon-SSP instance is possible but not supported for production operation. It requires promiscuous mode and manual setting of unique MAC addresses for the Charon instances. I/O performance will be significantly degraded. For testing purposes only.

Please note:

On VMware ESXi and other hypervisors promiscuous mode is disabled by default on virtual adapters. The best solution when running the Charon-SSP host in a VM is to dedicate a vNIC to the emulator and to set the MAC address of the emulated adapter to the same address as the MAC address of the ESXi vNIC. See Set MAC Address parameter below.
If a dedicated vNIC is not possible, the interface must support promiscuous mode and the Hypervisor must allow multiple MAC addresses for this interface.

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 can also be used to avoid having to set a VMware virtual network adapter to promiscuous mode. If this configuration is used, the emulator needs a dedicated NIC on the host system.