IPMP
With IPMP , or IP network multipathing provides the Solaris operating system fault tolerance and load balancing across network interface cards (NICs, network interface cards) for the virtual IP address of a computer (VIP) ready. When using IPMP, two or more network cards are connected to the network to which the computer is to be connected. One of these interfaces is primarily active and the others are secondary. If an error occurs with the primary interface, the Solaris system will automatically redirect the network communication to a secondary interface.
IPMP is comparable to teaming network cards under Windows. Here two or more NICs work together in a team. Each network card still has its own IP address in the network, but the network (i.e. the device with its various network cards) is assigned a VIP by IPMP. For this reason, other computers that want to connect to the server should use this VIP.
Load balancing increases the bandwidth of the server, as the load is distributed to all network cards in the same IPMP group and thus more data throughput is possible. On Solaris, the in.mpathd daemon is responsible for IPMP.
See also: Etherchannel