Crossbow: Network Virtualization and Resource Control

The crossbow project is available as part of Solaris 11. More information about the technology can be found at our Network Virtualization spotlight OTN. Some of the documents available here may be out of date. For the latest documentation see Solaris 11 Documentation.

Introduction to Crossbow

Crossbow provides the building blocks for network virtualization and resource control by virtualizing the stack and NIC around any service (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, NFS, etc.), protocol or Virtual machine.

Each virtual stack can be assigned its own priority and bandwidth on a shared NIC without causing any performance degradation. The architecture dynamically manages priority and bandwidth resources, and can provide better defense against denial-of-service attacks directed at a particular service or virtual machine by isolating the impact just to that entity.  The virtual stacks are separated by means of H/W classification engine such that traffic for one stack does not impact other virtual stacks.

Project Crossbow is next step in the evolution of Solaris networking stack and brings bandwidth resource control and virtualization as part of the architecture itself instead of the usual add-on layers which have heavy overheads and complexity.

Functional Components

Virtualization Components Virtual NICs Based on hardware and software Configurable link speed Based on open standards No configuration changes on the switch Real time information and historical data on resource use High availability  Virtual Switching Provides connectivity between virtual machines Enables vWire: Network In a Box VLAN separation

Flows (QoS Reinvented) The following attributes can be defined on a flow: Services (protocol + remote/local ports) Transport (TCP, UDP, SCTP, iSCSI, etc) Remote and local IP addresses Remote IP Subnets DSCP labels  The following properties can be set on each flow: Bandwidth limits Priorities CPUs

Virtual Wire Crossbow enables you to map a physical network setup to a single box, even a low end laptop. Creation of virtual networks and virtual network interfaces Enforcement of limits to network bandwidth Reconfiguration of virtual networks on the fly