Since late 2007, I handled Crossbow documentation responsibilities as one of two technical writers assigned to the team. Working on this advanced technology has been exciting and challenging. I was able to do things I had never had the opportunity to in my long career. For example, I had two gigundo systems with multiple CPUs and network interfaces to play with in the Crossbow lab. During the course of building tasks and scenarios for my docs, I actually installed an Apache HTTP server on one of the systems--a brand new experience for me. In addition to product documentation, I also wrote two Wikipedia articles on network virtualization, a BigAdmin entry, and blogs, all concerning Crossbow.

HOW TO FIND CROSSBOW DOCUMENTATION

We now have a wealth of Crosbow-related documentation for different audiences. For the basics, start here:

To try out virtual network interfaces (VNICs), Crossbow's hottest new feature, Steffen Weiberle's blog has a short write up on how to set up zones over VNICs for a laptop. Check out the steps on Steffen's blog, What the krowteN?.

To view the technical "big" picture, I'm especially pleased that the front page of Opensolaris.org features a perfect overview diagram of Crossbow's major components.

For more in-depth information, go to the Crossbow Documentation page. Here you will find articles, white papers, use cases, and other materials.

If you are a network consolidator or system administrator, look for the block "Administration Guides" on the Crossbow Documentation page. The files in the block make up the "product documentation" for Crossbow, including:

Planning for Network Virtualization and Resource Control
Example scenarios that show simple use cases for the Crossbow features.

Configuring Virtual Networks
Steps for creating public virtual networks, private virtual networks, and the all-important steps for validating that your virtual network is properly set up. This is Crossbow HowTo central.

Monitoring Virtual Networks and Resource Control
Steps for using new and tried-and-true observability tools with the Crossbow features. BTW, you can snoop a VNIC.

Configuring Resource Control and Bandwidth Management
Steps for managing packet flows and configuring bandwidth management on a per-interface basis. The current tasks show how to set up traditional bandwidth management on a network interface without a VNIC. I plan to add tasks for configuring bandwidth management on VNICs shortly.

WHERE TO GET THE CROSSBOW CODE

You can obtain Crossbow code as part of the Solaris Express Community Edition Build 105. Simply download the latest community edition build from the Solaris Download Center. You can also download Crossbow code as a package from the OpenSolaris Packaging Repository.