Based on kernel version 3.9. Page generated on 2013-05-02 23:10 EST.
1 2 Linux Ethernet Bonding Driver HOWTO 3 4 Latest update: 27 April 2011 5 6 Initial release : Thomas Davis <tadavis at lbl.gov> 7 Corrections, HA extensions : 2000/10/03-15 : 8 - Willy Tarreau <willy at meta-x.org> 9 - Constantine Gavrilov <const-g at xpert.com> 10 - Chad N. Tindel <ctindel at ieee dot org> 11 - Janice Girouard <girouard at us dot ibm dot com> 12 - Jay Vosburgh <fubar at us dot ibm dot com> 13 14 Reorganized and updated Feb 2005 by Jay Vosburgh 15 Added Sysfs information: 2006/04/24 16 - Mitch Williams <mitch.a.williams at intel.com> 17 18 Introduction 19 ============ 20 21 The Linux bonding driver provides a method for aggregating 22 multiple network interfaces into a single logical "bonded" interface. 23 The behavior of the bonded interfaces depends upon the mode; generally 24 speaking, modes provide either hot standby or load balancing services. 25 Additionally, link integrity monitoring may be performed. 26 27 The bonding driver originally came from Donald Becker's 28 beowulf patches for kernel 2.0. It has changed quite a bit since, and 29 the original tools from extreme-linux and beowulf sites will not work 30 with this version of the driver. 31 32 For new versions of the driver, updated userspace tools, and 33 who to ask for help, please follow the links at the end of this file. 34 35 Table of Contents 36 ================= 37 38 1. Bonding Driver Installation 39 40 2. Bonding Driver Options 41 42 3. Configuring Bonding Devices 43 3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support 44 3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig 45 3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig 46 3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support 47 3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts 48 3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts 49 3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave 50 3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually 51 3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs 52 3.5 Configuration with Interfaces Support 53 3.6 Overriding Configuration for Special Cases 54 55 4. Querying Bonding Configuration 56 4.1 Bonding Configuration 57 4.2 Network Configuration 58 59 5. Switch Configuration 60 61 6. 802.1q VLAN Support 62 63 7. Link Monitoring 64 7.1 ARP Monitor Operation 65 7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets 66 7.3 MII Monitor Operation 67 68 8. Potential Trouble Sources 69 8.1 Adventures in Routing 70 8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming 71 8.3 Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon 72 73 9. SNMP agents 74 75 10. Promiscuous mode 76 77 11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability 78 11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology 79 11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology 80 11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology 81 11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology 82 83 12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput 84 12.1 Maximum Throughput in a Single Switch Topology 85 12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology 86 12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology 87 12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology 88 12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology 89 12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology 90 91 13. Switch Behavior Issues 92 13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays 93 13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets 94 95 14. Hardware Specific Considerations 96 14.1 IBM BladeCenter 97 98 15. Frequently Asked Questions 99 100 16. Resources and Links 101 102 103 1. Bonding Driver Installation 104 ============================== 105 106 Most popular distro kernels ship with the bonding driver 107 already available as a module and the ifenslave user level control 108 program installed and ready for use. If your distro does not, or you 109 have need to compile bonding from source (e.g., configuring and 110 installing a mainline kernel from kernel.org), you'll need to perform 111 the following steps: 112 113 1.1 Configure and build the kernel with bonding 114 ----------------------------------------------- 115 116 The current version of the bonding driver is available in the 117 drivers/net/bonding subdirectory of the most recent kernel source 118 (which is available on http://kernel.org). Most users "rolling their 119 own" will want to use the most recent kernel from kernel.org. 120 121 Configure kernel with "make menuconfig" (or "make xconfig" or 122 "make config"), then select "Bonding driver support" in the "Network 123 device support" section. It is recommended that you configure the 124 driver as module since it is currently the only way to pass parameters 125 to the driver or configure more than one bonding device. 126 127 Build and install the new kernel and modules, then continue 128 below to install ifenslave. 129 130 1.2 Install ifenslave Control Utility 131 ------------------------------------- 132 133 The ifenslave user level control program is included in the 134 kernel source tree, in the file Documentation/networking/ifenslave.c. 135 It is generally recommended that you use the ifenslave that 136 corresponds to the kernel that you are using (either from the same 137 source tree or supplied with the distro), however, ifenslave 138 executables from older kernels should function (but features newer 139 than the ifenslave release are not supported). Running an ifenslave 140 that is newer than the kernel is not supported, and may or may not 141 work. 142 143 To install ifenslave, do the following: 144 145 # gcc -Wall -O -I/usr/src/linux/include ifenslave.c -o ifenslave 146 # cp ifenslave /sbin/ifenslave 147 148 If your kernel source is not in "/usr/src/linux," then replace 149 "/usr/src/linux/include" in the above with the location of your kernel 150 source include directory. 151 152 You may wish to back up any existing /sbin/ifenslave, or, for 153 testing or informal use, tag the ifenslave to the kernel version 154 (e.g., name the ifenslave executable /sbin/ifenslave-2.6.10). 155 156 IMPORTANT NOTE: 157 158 If you omit the "-I" or specify an incorrect directory, you 159 may end up with an ifenslave that is incompatible with the kernel 160 you're trying to build it for. Some distros (e.g., Red Hat from 7.1 161 onwards) do not have /usr/include/linux symbolically linked to the 162 default kernel source include directory. 163 164 SECOND IMPORTANT NOTE: 165 If you plan to configure bonding using sysfs or using the 166 /etc/network/interfaces file, you do not need to use ifenslave. 167 168 2. Bonding Driver Options 169 ========================= 170 171 Options for the bonding driver are supplied as parameters to the 172 bonding module at load time, or are specified via sysfs. 173 174 Module options may be given as command line arguments to the 175 insmod or modprobe command, but are usually specified in either the 176 /etc/modrobe.d/*.conf configuration files, or in a distro-specific 177 configuration file (some of which are detailed in the next section). 178 179 Details on bonding support for sysfs is provided in the 180 "Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs" section, below. 181 182 The available bonding driver parameters are listed below. If a 183 parameter is not specified the default value is used. When initially 184 configuring a bond, it is recommended "tail -f /var/log/messages" be 185 run in a separate window to watch for bonding driver error messages. 186 187 It is critical that either the miimon or arp_interval and 188 arp_ip_target parameters be specified, otherwise serious network 189 degradation will occur during link failures. Very few devices do not 190 support at least miimon, so there is really no reason not to use it. 191 192 Options with textual values will accept either the text name 193 or, for backwards compatibility, the option value. E.g., 194 "mode=802.3ad" and "mode=4" set the same mode. 195 196 The parameters are as follows: 197 198 active_slave 199 200 Specifies the new active slave for modes that support it 201 (active-backup, balance-alb and balance-tlb). Possible values 202 are the name of any currently enslaved interface, or an empty 203 string. If a name is given, the slave and its link must be up in order 204 to be selected as the new active slave. If an empty string is 205 specified, the current active slave is cleared, and a new active 206 slave is selected automatically. 207 208 Note that this is only available through the sysfs interface. No module 209 parameter by this name exists. 210 211 The normal value of this option is the name of the currently 212 active slave, or the empty string if there is no active slave or 213 the current mode does not use an active slave. 214 215 ad_select 216 217 Specifies the 802.3ad aggregation selection logic to use. The 218 possible values and their effects are: 219 220 stable or 0 221 222 The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate 223 bandwidth. 224 225 Reselection of the active aggregator occurs only when all 226 slaves of the active aggregator are down or the active 227 aggregator has no slaves. 228 229 This is the default value. 230 231 bandwidth or 1 232 233 The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate 234 bandwidth. Reselection occurs if: 235 236 - A slave is added to or removed from the bond 237 238 - Any slave's link state changes 239 240 - Any slave's 802.3ad association state changes 241 242 - The bond's administrative state changes to up 243 244 count or 2 245 246 The active aggregator is chosen by the largest number of 247 ports (slaves). Reselection occurs as described under the 248 "bandwidth" setting, above. 249 250 The bandwidth and count selection policies permit failover of 251 802.3ad aggregations when partial failure of the active aggregator 252 occurs. This keeps the aggregator with the highest availability 253 (either in bandwidth or in number of ports) active at all times. 254 255 This option was added in bonding version 3.4.0. 256 257 all_slaves_active 258 259 Specifies that duplicate frames (received on inactive ports) should be 260 dropped (0) or delivered (1). 261 262 Normally, bonding will drop duplicate frames (received on inactive 263 ports), which is desirable for most users. But there are some times 264 it is nice to allow duplicate frames to be delivered. 265 266 The default value is 0 (drop duplicate frames received on inactive 267 ports). 268 269 arp_interval 270 271 Specifies the ARP link monitoring frequency in milliseconds. 272 273 The ARP monitor works by periodically checking the slave 274 devices to determine whether they have sent or received 275 traffic recently (the precise criteria depends upon the 276 bonding mode, and the state of the slave). Regular traffic is 277 generated via ARP probes issued for the addresses specified by 278 the arp_ip_target option. 279 280 This behavior can be modified by the arp_validate option, 281 below. 282 283 If ARP monitoring is used in an etherchannel compatible mode 284 (modes 0 and 2), the switch should be configured in a mode 285 that evenly distributes packets across all links. If the 286 switch is configured to distribute the packets in an XOR 287 fashion, all replies from the ARP targets will be received on 288 the same link which could cause the other team members to 289 fail. ARP monitoring should not be used in conjunction with 290 miimon. A value of 0 disables ARP monitoring. The default 291 value is 0. 292 293 arp_ip_target 294 295 Specifies the IP addresses to use as ARP monitoring peers when 296 arp_interval is > 0. These are the targets of the ARP request 297 sent to determine the health of the link to the targets. 298 Specify these values in ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd format. Multiple IP 299 addresses must be separated by a comma. At least one IP 300 address must be given for ARP monitoring to function. The 301 maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16. The 302 default value is no IP addresses. 303 304 arp_validate 305 306 Specifies whether or not ARP probes and replies should be 307 validated in the active-backup mode. This causes the ARP 308 monitor to examine the incoming ARP requests and replies, and 309 only consider a slave to be up if it is receiving the 310 appropriate ARP traffic. 311 312 Possible values are: 313 314 none or 0 315 316 No validation is performed. This is the default. 317 318 active or 1 319 320 Validation is performed only for the active slave. 321 322 backup or 2 323 324 Validation is performed only for backup slaves. 325 326 all or 3 327 328 Validation is performed for all slaves. 329 330 For the active slave, the validation checks ARP replies to 331 confirm that they were generated by an arp_ip_target. Since 332 backup slaves do not typically receive these replies, the 333 validation performed for backup slaves is on the ARP request 334 sent out via the active slave. It is possible that some 335 switch or network configurations may result in situations 336 wherein the backup slaves do not receive the ARP requests; in 337 such a situation, validation of backup slaves must be 338 disabled. 339 340 This option is useful in network configurations in which 341 multiple bonding hosts are concurrently issuing ARPs to one or 342 more targets beyond a common switch. Should the link between 343 the switch and target fail (but not the switch itself), the 344 probe traffic generated by the multiple bonding instances will 345 fool the standard ARP monitor into considering the links as 346 still up. Use of the arp_validate option can resolve this, as 347 the ARP monitor will only consider ARP requests and replies 348 associated with its own instance of bonding. 349 350 This option was added in bonding version 3.1.0. 351 352 downdelay 353 354 Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before disabling 355 a slave after a link failure has been detected. This option 356 is only valid for the miimon link monitor. The downdelay 357 value should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it 358 will be rounded down to the nearest multiple. The default 359 value is 0. 360 361 fail_over_mac 362 363 Specifies whether active-backup mode should set all slaves to 364 the same MAC address at enslavement (the traditional 365 behavior), or, when enabled, perform special handling of the 366 bond's MAC address in accordance with the selected policy. 367 368 Possible values are: 369 370 none or 0 371 372 This setting disables fail_over_mac, and causes 373 bonding to set all slaves of an active-backup bond to 374 the same MAC address at enslavement time. This is the 375 default. 376 377 active or 1 378 379 The "active" fail_over_mac policy indicates that the 380 MAC address of the bond should always be the MAC 381 address of the currently active slave. The MAC 382 address of the slaves is not changed; instead, the MAC 383 address of the bond changes during a failover. 384 385 This policy is useful for devices that cannot ever 386 alter their MAC address, or for devices that refuse 387 incoming broadcasts with their own source MAC (which 388 interferes with the ARP monitor). 389 390 The down side of this policy is that every device on 391 the network must be updated via gratuitous ARP, 392 vs. just updating a switch or set of switches (which 393 often takes place for any traffic, not just ARP 394 traffic, if the switch snoops incoming traffic to 395 update its tables) for the traditional method. If the 396 gratuitous ARP is lost, communication may be 397 disrupted. 398 399 When this policy is used in conjunction with the mii 400 monitor, devices which assert link up prior to being 401 able to actually transmit and receive are particularly 402 susceptible to loss of the gratuitous ARP, and an 403 appropriate updelay setting may be required. 404 405 follow or 2 406 407 The "follow" fail_over_mac policy causes the MAC 408 address of the bond to be selected normally (normally 409 the MAC address of the first slave added to the bond). 410 However, the second and subsequent slaves are not set 411 to this MAC address while they are in a backup role; a 412 slave is programmed with the bond's MAC address at 413 failover time (and the formerly active slave receives 414 the newly active slave's MAC address). 415 416 This policy is useful for multiport devices that 417 either become confused or incur a performance penalty 418 when multiple ports are programmed with the same MAC 419 address. 420 421 422 The default policy is none, unless the first slave cannot 423 change its MAC address, in which case the active policy is 424 selected by default. 425 426 This option may be modified via sysfs only when no slaves are 427 present in the bond. 428 429 This option was added in bonding version 3.2.0. The "follow" 430 policy was added in bonding version 3.3.0. 431 432 lacp_rate 433 434 Option specifying the rate in which we'll ask our link partner 435 to transmit LACPDU packets in 802.3ad mode. Possible values 436 are: 437 438 slow or 0 439 Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 30 seconds 440 441 fast or 1 442 Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 1 second 443 444 The default is slow. 445 446 max_bonds 447 448 Specifies the number of bonding devices to create for this 449 instance of the bonding driver. E.g., if max_bonds is 3, and 450 the bonding driver is not already loaded, then bond0, bond1 451 and bond2 will be created. The default value is 1. Specifying 452 a value of 0 will load bonding, but will not create any devices. 453 454 miimon 455 456 Specifies the MII link monitoring frequency in milliseconds. 457 This determines how often the link state of each slave is 458 inspected for link failures. A value of zero disables MII 459 link monitoring. A value of 100 is a good starting point. 460 The use_carrier option, below, affects how the link state is 461 determined. See the High Availability section for additional 462 information. The default value is 0. 463 464 min_links 465 466 Specifies the minimum number of links that must be active before 467 asserting carrier. It is similar to the Cisco EtherChannel min-links 468 feature. This allows setting the minimum number of member ports that 469 must be up (link-up state) before marking the bond device as up 470 (carrier on). This is useful for situations where higher level services 471 such as clustering want to ensure a minimum number of low bandwidth 472 links are active before switchover. This option only affect 802.3ad 473 mode. 474 475 The default value is 0. This will cause carrier to be asserted (for 476 802.3ad mode) whenever there is an active aggregator, regardless of the 477 number of available links in that aggregator. Note that, because an 478 aggregator cannot be active without at least one available link, 479 setting this option to 0 or to 1 has the exact same effect. 480 481 mode 482 483 Specifies one of the bonding policies. The default is 484 balance-rr (round robin). Possible values are: 485 486 balance-rr or 0 487 488 Round-robin policy: Transmit packets in sequential 489 order from the first available slave through the 490 last. This mode provides load balancing and fault 491 tolerance. 492 493 active-backup or 1 494 495 Active-backup policy: Only one slave in the bond is 496 active. A different slave becomes active if, and only 497 if, the active slave fails. The bond's MAC address is 498 externally visible on only one port (network adapter) 499 to avoid confusing the switch. 500 501 In bonding version 2.6.2 or later, when a failover 502 occurs in active-backup mode, bonding will issue one 503 or more gratuitous ARPs on the newly active slave. 504 One gratuitous ARP is issued for the bonding master 505 interface and each VLAN interfaces configured above 506 it, provided that the interface has at least one IP 507 address configured. Gratuitous ARPs issued for VLAN 508 interfaces are tagged with the appropriate VLAN id. 509 510 This mode provides fault tolerance. The primary 511 option, documented below, affects the behavior of this 512 mode. 513 514 balance-xor or 2 515 516 XOR policy: Transmit based on the selected transmit 517 hash policy. The default policy is a simple [(source 518 MAC address XOR'd with destination MAC address) modulo 519 slave count]. Alternate transmit policies may be 520 selected via the xmit_hash_policy option, described 521 below. 522 523 This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance. 524 525 broadcast or 3 526 527 Broadcast policy: transmits everything on all slave 528 interfaces. This mode provides fault tolerance. 529 530 802.3ad or 4 531 532 IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation. Creates 533 aggregation groups that share the same speed and 534 duplex settings. Utilizes all slaves in the active 535 aggregator according to the 802.3ad specification. 536 537 Slave selection for outgoing traffic is done according 538 to the transmit hash policy, which may be changed from 539 the default simple XOR policy via the xmit_hash_policy 540 option, documented below. Note that not all transmit 541 policies may be 802.3ad compliant, particularly in 542 regards to the packet mis-ordering requirements of 543 section 43.2.4 of the 802.3ad standard. Differing 544 peer implementations will have varying tolerances for 545 noncompliance. 546 547 Prerequisites: 548 549 1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving 550 the speed and duplex of each slave. 551 552 2. A switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link 553 aggregation. 554 555 Most switches will require some type of configuration 556 to enable 802.3ad mode. 557 558 balance-tlb or 5 559 560 Adaptive transmit load balancing: channel bonding that 561 does not require any special switch support. The 562 outgoing traffic is distributed according to the 563 current load (computed relative to the speed) on each 564 slave. Incoming traffic is received by the current 565 slave. If the receiving slave fails, another slave 566 takes over the MAC address of the failed receiving 567 slave. 568 569 Prerequisite: 570 571 Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving the 572 speed of each slave. 573 574 balance-alb or 6 575 576 Adaptive load balancing: includes balance-tlb plus 577 receive load balancing (rlb) for IPV4 traffic, and 578 does not require any special switch support. The 579 receive load balancing is achieved by ARP negotiation. 580 The bonding driver intercepts the ARP Replies sent by 581 the local system on their way out and overwrites the 582 source hardware address with the unique hardware 583 address of one of the slaves in the bond such that 584 different peers use different hardware addresses for 585 the server. 586 587 Receive traffic from connections created by the server 588 is also balanced. When the local system sends an ARP 589 Request the bonding driver copies and saves the peer's 590 IP information from the ARP packet. When the ARP 591 Reply arrives from the peer, its hardware address is 592 retrieved and the bonding driver initiates an ARP 593 reply to this peer assigning it to one of the slaves 594 in the bond. A problematic outcome of using ARP 595 negotiation for balancing is that each time that an 596 ARP request is broadcast it uses the hardware address 597 of the bond. Hence, peers learn the hardware address 598 of the bond and the balancing of receive traffic 599 collapses to the current slave. This is handled by 600 sending updates (ARP Replies) to all the peers with 601 their individually assigned hardware address such that 602 the traffic is redistributed. Receive traffic is also 603 redistributed when a new slave is added to the bond 604 and when an inactive slave is re-activated. The 605 receive load is distributed sequentially (round robin) 606 among the group of highest speed slaves in the bond. 607 608 When a link is reconnected or a new slave joins the 609 bond the receive traffic is redistributed among all 610 active slaves in the bond by initiating ARP Replies 611 with the selected MAC address to each of the 612 clients. The updelay parameter (detailed below) must 613 be set to a value equal or greater than the switch's 614 forwarding delay so that the ARP Replies sent to the 615 peers will not be blocked by the switch. 616 617 Prerequisites: 618 619 1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving 620 the speed of each slave. 621 622 2. Base driver support for setting the hardware 623 address of a device while it is open. This is 624 required so that there will always be one slave in the 625 team using the bond hardware address (the 626 curr_active_slave) while having a unique hardware 627 address for each slave in the bond. If the 628 curr_active_slave fails its hardware address is 629 swapped with the new curr_active_slave that was 630 chosen. 631 632 num_grat_arp 633 num_unsol_na 634 635 Specify the number of peer notifications (gratuitous ARPs and 636 unsolicited IPv6 Neighbor Advertisements) to be issued after a 637 failover event. As soon as the link is up on the new slave 638 (possibly immediately) a peer notification is sent on the 639 bonding device and each VLAN sub-device. This is repeated at 640 each link monitor interval (arp_interval or miimon, whichever 641 is active) if the number is greater than 1. 642 643 The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1. These options 644 affect only the active-backup mode. These options were added for 645 bonding versions 3.3.0 and 3.4.0 respectively. 646 647 From Linux 3.0 and bonding version 3.7.1, these notifications 648 are generated by the ipv4 and ipv6 code and the numbers of 649 repetitions cannot be set independently. 650 651 primary 652 653 A string (eth0, eth2, etc) specifying which slave is the 654 primary device. The specified device will always be the 655 active slave while it is available. Only when the primary is 656 off-line will alternate devices be used. This is useful when 657 one slave is preferred over another, e.g., when one slave has 658 higher throughput than another. 659 660 The primary option is only valid for active-backup mode. 661 662 primary_reselect 663 664 Specifies the reselection policy for the primary slave. This 665 affects how the primary slave is chosen to become the active slave 666 when failure of the active slave or recovery of the primary slave 667 occurs. This option is designed to prevent flip-flopping between 668 the primary slave and other slaves. Possible values are: 669 670 always or 0 (default) 671 672 The primary slave becomes the active slave whenever it 673 comes back up. 674 675 better or 1 676 677 The primary slave becomes the active slave when it comes 678 back up, if the speed and duplex of the primary slave is 679 better than the speed and duplex of the current active 680 slave. 681 682 failure or 2 683 684 The primary slave becomes the active slave only if the 685 current active slave fails and the primary slave is up. 686 687 The primary_reselect setting is ignored in two cases: 688 689 If no slaves are active, the first slave to recover is 690 made the active slave. 691 692 When initially enslaved, the primary slave is always made 693 the active slave. 694 695 Changing the primary_reselect policy via sysfs will cause an 696 immediate selection of the best active slave according to the new 697 policy. This may or may not result in a change of the active 698 slave, depending upon the circumstances. 699 700 This option was added for bonding version 3.6.0. 701 702 updelay 703 704 Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before enabling a 705 slave after a link recovery has been detected. This option is 706 only valid for the miimon link monitor. The updelay value 707 should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it will be 708 rounded down to the nearest multiple. The default value is 0. 709 710 use_carrier 711 712 Specifies whether or not miimon should use MII or ETHTOOL 713 ioctls vs. netif_carrier_ok() to determine the link 714 status. The MII or ETHTOOL ioctls are less efficient and 715 utilize a deprecated calling sequence within the kernel. The 716 netif_carrier_ok() relies on the device driver to maintain its 717 state with netif_carrier_on/off; at this writing, most, but 718 not all, device drivers support this facility. 719 720 If bonding insists that the link is up when it should not be, 721 it may be that your network device driver does not support 722 netif_carrier_on/off. The default state for netif_carrier is 723 "carrier on," so if a driver does not support netif_carrier, 724 it will appear as if the link is always up. In this case, 725 setting use_carrier to 0 will cause bonding to revert to the 726 MII / ETHTOOL ioctl method to determine the link state. 727 728 A value of 1 enables the use of netif_carrier_ok(), a value of 729 0 will use the deprecated MII / ETHTOOL ioctls. The default 730 value is 1. 731 732 xmit_hash_policy 733 734 Selects the transmit hash policy to use for slave selection in 735 balance-xor and 802.3ad modes. Possible values are: 736 737 layer2 738 739 Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses to generate the 740 hash. The formula is 741 742 (source MAC XOR destination MAC) modulo slave count 743 744 This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular 745 network peer on the same slave. 746 747 This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant. 748 749 layer2+3 750 751 This policy uses a combination of layer2 and layer3 752 protocol information to generate the hash. 753 754 Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses and IP addresses to 755 generate the hash. The IPv4 formula is 756 757 (((source IP XOR dest IP) AND 0xffff) XOR 758 ( source MAC XOR destination MAC )) 759 modulo slave count 760 761 The IPv6 formula is 762 763 hash = (source ip quad 2 XOR dest IP quad 2) XOR 764 (source ip quad 3 XOR dest IP quad 3) XOR 765 (source ip quad 4 XOR dest IP quad 4) 766 767 (((hash >> 24) XOR (hash >> 16) XOR (hash >> 8) XOR hash) 768 XOR (source MAC XOR destination MAC)) 769 modulo slave count 770 771 This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular 772 network peer on the same slave. For non-IP traffic, 773 the formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit 774 hash policy. 775 776 This policy is intended to provide a more balanced 777 distribution of traffic than layer2 alone, especially 778 in environments where a layer3 gateway device is 779 required to reach most destinations. 780 781 This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant. 782 783 layer3+4 784 785 This policy uses upper layer protocol information, 786 when available, to generate the hash. This allows for 787 traffic to a particular network peer to span multiple 788 slaves, although a single connection will not span 789 multiple slaves. 790 791 The formula for unfragmented IPv4 TCP and UDP packets is 792 793 ((source port XOR dest port) XOR 794 ((source IP XOR dest IP) AND 0xffff) 795 modulo slave count 796 797 The formula for unfragmented IPv6 TCP and UDP packets is 798 799 hash = (source port XOR dest port) XOR 800 ((source ip quad 2 XOR dest IP quad 2) XOR 801 (source ip quad 3 XOR dest IP quad 3) XOR 802 (source ip quad 4 XOR dest IP quad 4)) 803 804 ((hash >> 24) XOR (hash >> 16) XOR (hash >> 8) XOR hash) 805 modulo slave count 806 807 For fragmented TCP or UDP packets and all other IPv4 and 808 IPv6 protocol traffic, the source and destination port 809 information is omitted. For non-IP traffic, the 810 formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit hash 811 policy. 812 813 The IPv4 policy is intended to mimic the behavior of 814 certain switches, notably Cisco switches with PFC2 as 815 well as some Foundry and IBM products. 816 817 This algorithm is not fully 802.3ad compliant. A 818 single TCP or UDP conversation containing both 819 fragmented and unfragmented packets will see packets 820 striped across two interfaces. This may result in out 821 of order delivery. Most traffic types will not meet 822 this criteria, as TCP rarely fragments traffic, and 823 most UDP traffic is not involved in extended 824 conversations. Other implementations of 802.3ad may 825 or may not tolerate this noncompliance. 826 827 The default value is layer2. This option was added in bonding 828 version 2.6.3. In earlier versions of bonding, this parameter 829 does not exist, and the layer2 policy is the only policy. The 830 layer2+3 value was added for bonding version 3.2.2. 831 832 resend_igmp 833 834 Specifies the number of IGMP membership reports to be issued after 835 a failover event. One membership report is issued immediately after 836 the failover, subsequent packets are sent in each 200ms interval. 837 838 The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1. A value of 0 839 prevents the IGMP membership report from being issued in response 840 to the failover event. 841 842 This option is useful for bonding modes balance-rr (0), active-backup 843 (1), balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6), in which a failover can 844 switch the IGMP traffic from one slave to another. Therefore a fresh 845 IGMP report must be issued to cause the switch to forward the incoming 846 IGMP traffic over the newly selected slave. 847 848 This option was added for bonding version 3.7.0. 849 850 3. Configuring Bonding Devices 851 ============================== 852 853 You can configure bonding using either your distro's network 854 initialization scripts, or manually using either ifenslave or the 855 sysfs interface. Distros generally use one of three packages for the 856 network initialization scripts: initscripts, sysconfig or interfaces. 857 Recent versions of these packages have support for bonding, while older 858 versions do not. 859 860 We will first describe the options for configuring bonding for 861 distros using versions of initscripts, sysconfig and interfaces with full 862 or partial support for bonding, then provide information on enabling 863 bonding without support from the network initialization scripts (i.e., 864 older versions of initscripts or sysconfig). 865 866 If you're unsure whether your distro uses sysconfig, 867 initscripts or interfaces, or don't know if it's new enough, have no fear. 868 Determining this is fairly straightforward. 869 870 First, look for a file called interfaces in /etc/network directory. 871 If this file is present in your system, then your system use interfaces. See 872 Configuration with Interfaces Support. 873 874 Else, issue the command: 875 876 $ rpm -qf /sbin/ifup 877 878 It will respond with a line of text starting with either 879 "initscripts" or "sysconfig," followed by some numbers. This is the 880 package that provides your network initialization scripts. 881 882 Next, to determine if your installation supports bonding, 883 issue the command: 884 885 $ grep ifenslave /sbin/ifup 886 887 If this returns any matches, then your initscripts or 888 sysconfig has support for bonding. 889 890 3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support 891 ---------------------------------------- 892 893 This section applies to distros using a version of sysconfig 894 with bonding support, for example, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. 895 896 SuSE SLES 9's networking configuration system does support 897 bonding, however, at this writing, the YaST system configuration 898 front end does not provide any means to work with bonding devices. 899 Bonding devices can be managed by hand, however, as follows. 900 901 First, if they have not already been configured, configure the 902 slave devices. On SLES 9, this is most easily done by running the 903 yast2 sysconfig configuration utility. The goal is for to create an 904 ifcfg-id file for each slave device. The simplest way to accomplish 905 this is to configure the devices for DHCP (this is only to get the 906 file ifcfg-id file created; see below for some issues with DHCP). The 907 name of the configuration file for each device will be of the form: 908 909 ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 910 911 Where the "xx" portion will be replaced with the digits from 912 the device's permanent MAC address. 913 914 Once the set of ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files has been 915 created, it is necessary to edit the configuration files for the slave 916 devices (the MAC addresses correspond to those of the slave devices). 917 Before editing, the file will contain multiple lines, and will look 918 something like this: 919 920 BOOTPROTO='dhcp' 921 STARTMODE='on' 922 USERCTL='no' 923 UNIQUE='XNzu.WeZGOGF+4wE' 924 _nm_name='bus-pci-0001:61:01.0' 925 926 Change the BOOTPROTO and STARTMODE lines to the following: 927 928 BOOTPROTO='none' 929 STARTMODE='off' 930 931 Do not alter the UNIQUE or _nm_name lines. Remove any other 932 lines (USERCTL, etc). 933 934 Once the ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files have been modified, 935 it's time to create the configuration file for the bonding device 936 itself. This file is named ifcfg-bondX, where X is the number of the 937 bonding device to create, starting at 0. The first such file is 938 ifcfg-bond0, the second is ifcfg-bond1, and so on. The sysconfig 939 network configuration system will correctly start multiple instances 940 of bonding. 941 942 The contents of the ifcfg-bondX file is as follows: 943 944 BOOTPROTO="static" 945 BROADCAST="10.0.2.255" 946 IPADDR="10.0.2.10" 947 NETMASK="255.255.0.0" 948 NETWORK="10.0.2.0" 949 REMOTE_IPADDR="" 950 STARTMODE="onboot" 951 BONDING_MASTER="yes" 952 BONDING_MODULE_OPTS="mode=active-backup miimon=100" 953 BONDING_SLAVE0="eth0" 954 BONDING_SLAVE1="bus-pci-0000:06:08.1" 955 956 Replace the sample BROADCAST, IPADDR, NETMASK and NETWORK 957 values with the appropriate values for your network. 958 959 The STARTMODE specifies when the device is brought online. 960 The possible values are: 961 962 onboot: The device is started at boot time. If you're not 963 sure, this is probably what you want. 964 965 manual: The device is started only when ifup is called 966 manually. Bonding devices may be configured this 967 way if you do not wish them to start automatically 968 at boot for some reason. 969 970 hotplug: The device is started by a hotplug event. This is not 971 a valid choice for a bonding device. 972 973 off or ignore: The device configuration is ignored. 974 975 The line BONDING_MASTER='yes' indicates that the device is a 976 bonding master device. The only useful value is "yes." 977 978 The contents of BONDING_MODULE_OPTS are supplied to the 979 instance of the bonding module for this device. Specify the options 980 for the bonding mode, link monitoring, and so on here. Do not include 981 the max_bonds bonding parameter; this will confuse the configuration 982 system if you have multiple bonding devices. 983 984 Finally, supply one BONDING_SLAVEn="slave device" for each 985 slave. where "n" is an increasing value, one for each slave. The 986 "slave device" is either an interface name, e.g., "eth0", or a device 987 specifier for the network device. The interface name is easier to 988 find, but the ethN names are subject to change at boot time if, e.g., 989 a device early in the sequence has failed. The device specifiers 990 (bus-pci-0000:06:08.1 in the example above) specify the physical 991 network device, and will not change unless the device's bus location 992 changes (for example, it is moved from one PCI slot to another). The 993 example above uses one of each type for demonstration purposes; most 994 configurations will choose one or the other for all slave devices. 995 996 When all configuration files have been modified or created, 997 networking must be restarted for the configuration changes to take 998 effect. This can be accomplished via the following: 999 1000 # /etc/init.d/network restart 1001 1002 Note that the network control script (/sbin/ifdown) will 1003 remove the bonding module as part of the network shutdown processing, 1004 so it is not necessary to remove the module by hand if, e.g., the 1005 module parameters have changed. 1006 1007 Also, at this writing, YaST/YaST2 will not manage bonding 1008 devices (they do not show bonding interfaces on its list of network 1009 devices). It is necessary to edit the configuration file by hand to 1010 change the bonding configuration. 1011 1012 Additional general options and details of the ifcfg file 1013 format can be found in an example ifcfg template file: 1014 1015 /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template 1016 1017 Note that the template does not document the various BONDING_ 1018 settings described above, but does describe many of the other options. 1019 1020 3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig 1021 ------------------------------- 1022 1023 Under sysconfig, configuring a device with BOOTPROTO='dhcp' 1024 will cause it to query DHCP for its IP address information. At this 1025 writing, this does not function for bonding devices; the scripts 1026 attempt to obtain the device address from DHCP prior to adding any of 1027 the slave devices. Without active slaves, the DHCP requests are not 1028 sent to the network. 1029 1030 3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig 1031 ----------------------------------------------- 1032 1033 The sysconfig network initialization system is capable of 1034 handling multiple bonding devices. All that is necessary is for each 1035 bonding instance to have an appropriately configured ifcfg-bondX file 1036 (as described above). Do not specify the "max_bonds" parameter to any 1037 instance of bonding, as this will confuse sysconfig. If you require 1038 multiple bonding devices with identical parameters, create multiple 1039 ifcfg-bondX files. 1040 1041 Because the sysconfig scripts supply the bonding module 1042 options in the ifcfg-bondX file, it is not necessary to add them to 1043 the system /etc/modules.d/*.conf configuration files. 1044 1045 3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support 1046 ------------------------------------------ 1047 1048 This section applies to distros using a recent version of 1049 initscripts with bonding support, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 1050 version 3 or later, Fedora, etc. On these systems, the network 1051 initialization scripts have knowledge of bonding, and can be configured to 1052 control bonding devices. Note that older versions of the initscripts 1053 package have lower levels of support for bonding; this will be noted where 1054 applicable. 1055 1056 These distros will not automatically load the network adapter 1057 driver unless the ethX device is configured with an IP address. 1058 Because of this constraint, users must manually configure a 1059 network-script file for all physical adapters that will be members of 1060 a bondX link. Network script files are located in the directory: 1061 1062 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts 1063 1064 The file name must be prefixed with "ifcfg-eth" and suffixed 1065 with the adapter's physical adapter number. For example, the script 1066 for eth0 would be named /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0. 1067 Place the following text in the file: 1068 1069 DEVICE=eth0 1070 USERCTL=no 1071 ONBOOT=yes 1072 MASTER=bond0 1073 SLAVE=yes 1074 BOOTPROTO=none 1075 1076 The DEVICE= line will be different for every ethX device and 1077 must correspond with the name of the file, i.e., ifcfg-eth1 must have 1078 a device line of DEVICE=eth1. The setting of the MASTER= line will 1079 also depend on the final bonding interface name chosen for your bond. 1080 As with other network devices, these typically start at 0, and go up 1081 one for each device, i.e., the first bonding instance is bond0, the 1082 second is bond1, and so on. 1083 1084 Next, create a bond network script. The file name for this 1085 script will be /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bondX where X is 1086 the number of the bond. For bond0 the file is named "ifcfg-bond0", 1087 for bond1 it is named "ifcfg-bond1", and so on. Within that file, 1088 place the following text: 1089 1090 DEVICE=bond0 1091 IPADDR=192.168.1.1 1092 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 1093 NETWORK=192.168.1.0 1094 BROADCAST=192.168.1.255 1095 ONBOOT=yes 1096 BOOTPROTO=none 1097 USERCTL=no 1098 1099 Be sure to change the networking specific lines (IPADDR, 1100 NETMASK, NETWORK and BROADCAST) to match your network configuration. 1101 1102 For later versions of initscripts, such as that found with Fedora 1103 7 (or later) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5 (or later), it is possible, 1104 and, indeed, preferable, to specify the bonding options in the ifcfg-bond0 1105 file, e.g. a line of the format: 1106 1107 BONDING_OPTS="mode=active-backup arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.1.254" 1108 1109 will configure the bond with the specified options. The options 1110 specified in BONDING_OPTS are identical to the bonding module parameters 1111 except for the arp_ip_target field when using versions of initscripts older 1112 than and 8.57 (Fedora 8) and 8.45.19 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2). When 1113 using older versions each target should be included as a separate option and 1114 should be preceded by a '+' to indicate it should be added to the list of 1115 queried targets, e.g., 1116 1117 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.1 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.2 1118 1119 is the proper syntax to specify multiple targets. When specifying 1120 options via BONDING_OPTS, it is not necessary to edit /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf. 1121 1122 For even older versions of initscripts that do not support 1123 BONDING_OPTS, it is necessary to edit /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf, depending upon 1124 your distro) to load the bonding module with your desired options when the 1125 bond0 interface is brought up. The following lines in /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf 1126 will load the bonding module, and select its options: 1127 1128 alias bond0 bonding 1129 options bond0 mode=balance-alb miimon=100 1130 1131 Replace the sample parameters with the appropriate set of 1132 options for your configuration. 1133 1134 Finally run "/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart" as root. This 1135 will restart the networking subsystem and your bond link should be now 1136 up and running. 1137 1138 3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts 1139 --------------------------------- 1140 1141 Recent versions of initscripts (the versions supplied with Fedora 1142 Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, or later versions, are reported to 1143 work) have support for assigning IP information to bonding devices via 1144 DHCP. 1145 1146 To configure bonding for DHCP, configure it as described 1147 above, except replace the line "BOOTPROTO=none" with "BOOTPROTO=dhcp" 1148 and add a line consisting of "TYPE=Bonding". Note that the TYPE value 1149 is case sensitive. 1150 1151 3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts 1152 ------------------------------------------------- 1153 1154 Initscripts packages that are included with Fedora 7 and Red Hat 1155 Enterprise Linux 5 support multiple bonding interfaces by simply 1156 specifying the appropriate BONDING_OPTS= in ifcfg-bondX where X is the 1157 number of the bond. This support requires sysfs support in the kernel, 1158 and a bonding driver of version 3.0.0 or later. Other configurations may 1159 not support this method for specifying multiple bonding interfaces; for 1160 those instances, see the "Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually" section, 1161 below. 1162 1163 3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave 1164 ----------------------------------------------- 1165 1166 This section applies to distros whose network initialization 1167 scripts (the sysconfig or initscripts package) do not have specific 1168 knowledge of bonding. One such distro is SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 1169 version 8. 1170 1171 The general method for these systems is to place the bonding 1172 module parameters into a config file in /etc/modprobe.d/ (as 1173 appropriate for the installed distro), then add modprobe and/or 1174 ifenslave commands to the system's global init script. The name of 1175 the global init script differs; for sysconfig, it is 1176 /etc/init.d/boot.local and for initscripts it is /etc/rc.d/rc.local. 1177 1178 For example, if you wanted to make a simple bond of two e100 1179 devices (presumed to be eth0 and eth1), and have it persist across 1180 reboots, edit the appropriate file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or 1181 /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the following: 1182 1183 modprobe bonding mode=balance-alb miimon=100 1184 modprobe e100 1185 ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up 1186 ifenslave bond0 eth0 1187 ifenslave bond0 eth1 1188 1189 Replace the example bonding module parameters and bond0 1190 network configuration (IP address, netmask, etc) with the appropriate 1191 values for your configuration. 1192 1193 Unfortunately, this method will not provide support for the 1194 ifup and ifdown scripts on the bond devices. To reload the bonding 1195 configuration, it is necessary to run the initialization script, e.g., 1196 1197 # /etc/init.d/boot.local 1198 1199 or 1200 1201 # /etc/rc.d/rc.local 1202 1203 It may be desirable in such a case to create a separate script 1204 which only initializes the bonding configuration, then call that 1205 separate script from within boot.local. This allows for bonding to be 1206 enabled without re-running the entire global init script. 1207 1208 To shut down the bonding devices, it is necessary to first 1209 mark the bonding device itself as being down, then remove the 1210 appropriate device driver modules. For our example above, you can do 1211 the following: 1212 1213 # ifconfig bond0 down 1214 # rmmod bonding 1215 # rmmod e100 1216 1217 Again, for convenience, it may be desirable to create a script 1218 with these commands. 1219 1220 1221 3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually 1222 ----------------------------------------- 1223 1224 This section contains information on configuring multiple 1225 bonding devices with differing options for those systems whose network 1226 initialization scripts lack support for configuring multiple bonds. 1227 1228 If you require multiple bonding devices, but all with the same 1229 options, you may wish to use the "max_bonds" module parameter, 1230 documented above. 1231 1232 To create multiple bonding devices with differing options, it is 1233 preferable to use bonding parameters exported by sysfs, documented in the 1234 section below. 1235 1236 For versions of bonding without sysfs support, the only means to 1237 provide multiple instances of bonding with differing options is to load 1238 the bonding driver multiple times. Note that current versions of the 1239 sysconfig network initialization scripts handle this automatically; if 1240 your distro uses these scripts, no special action is needed. See the 1241 section Configuring Bonding Devices, above, if you're not sure about your 1242 network initialization scripts. 1243 1244 To load multiple instances of the module, it is necessary to 1245 specify a different name for each instance (the module loading system 1246 requires that every loaded module, even multiple instances of the same 1247 module, have a unique name). This is accomplished by supplying multiple 1248 sets of bonding options in /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf, for example: 1249 1250 alias bond0 bonding 1251 options bond0 -o bond0 mode=balance-rr miimon=100 1252 1253 alias bond1 bonding 1254 options bond1 -o bond1 mode=balance-alb miimon=50 1255 1256 will load the bonding module two times. The first instance is 1257 named "bond0" and creates the bond0 device in balance-rr mode with an 1258 miimon of 100. The second instance is named "bond1" and creates the 1259 bond1 device in balance-alb mode with an miimon of 50. 1260 1261 In some circumstances (typically with older distributions), 1262 the above does not work, and the second bonding instance never sees 1263 its options. In that case, the second options line can be substituted 1264 as follows: 1265 1266 install bond1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bonding -o bond1 \ 1267 mode=balance-alb miimon=50 1268 1269 This may be repeated any number of times, specifying a new and 1270 unique name in place of bond1 for each subsequent instance. 1271 1272 It has been observed that some Red Hat supplied kernels are unable 1273 to rename modules at load time (the "-o bond1" part). Attempts to pass 1274 that option to modprobe will produce an "Operation not permitted" error. 1275 This has been reported on some Fedora Core kernels, and has been seen on 1276 RHEL 4 as well. On kernels exhibiting this problem, it will be impossible 1277 to configure multiple bonds with differing parameters (as they are older 1278 kernels, and also lack sysfs support). 1279 1280 3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs 1281 ------------------------------------------ 1282 1283 Starting with version 3.0.0, Channel Bonding may be configured 1284 via the sysfs interface. This interface allows dynamic configuration 1285 of all bonds in the system without unloading the module. It also 1286 allows for adding and removing bonds at runtime. Ifenslave is no 1287 longer required, though it is still supported. 1288 1289 Use of the sysfs interface allows you to use multiple bonds 1290 with different configurations without having to reload the module. 1291 It also allows you to use multiple, differently configured bonds when 1292 bonding is compiled into the kernel. 1293 1294 You must have the sysfs filesystem mounted to configure 1295 bonding this way. The examples in this document assume that you 1296 are using the standard mount point for sysfs, e.g. /sys. If your 1297 sysfs filesystem is mounted elsewhere, you will need to adjust the 1298 example paths accordingly. 1299 1300 Creating and Destroying Bonds 1301 ----------------------------- 1302 To add a new bond foo: 1303 # echo +foo > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters 1304 1305 To remove an existing bond bar: 1306 # echo -bar > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters 1307 1308 To show all existing bonds: 1309 # cat /sys/class/net/bonding_masters 1310 1311 NOTE: due to 4K size limitation of sysfs files, this list may be 1312 truncated if you have more than a few hundred bonds. This is unlikely 1313 to occur under normal operating conditions. 1314 1315 Adding and Removing Slaves 1316 -------------------------- 1317 Interfaces may be enslaved to a bond using the file 1318 /sys/class/net/<bond>/bonding/slaves. The semantics for this file 1319 are the same as for the bonding_masters file. 1320 1321 To enslave interface eth0 to bond bond0: 1322 # ifconfig bond0 up 1323 # echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves 1324 1325 To free slave eth0 from bond bond0: 1326 # echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves 1327 1328 When an interface is enslaved to a bond, symlinks between the 1329 two are created in the sysfs filesystem. In this case, you would get 1330 /sys/class/net/bond0/slave_eth0 pointing to /sys/class/net/eth0, and 1331 /sys/class/net/eth0/master pointing to /sys/class/net/bond0. 1332 1333 This means that you can tell quickly whether or not an 1334 interface is enslaved by looking for the master symlink. Thus: 1335 # echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/eth0/master/bonding/slaves 1336 will free eth0 from whatever bond it is enslaved to, regardless of 1337 the name of the bond interface. 1338 1339 Changing a Bond's Configuration 1340 ------------------------------- 1341 Each bond may be configured individually by manipulating the 1342 files located in /sys/class/net/<bond name>/bonding 1343 1344 The names of these files correspond directly with the command- 1345 line parameters described elsewhere in this file, and, with the 1346 exception of arp_ip_target, they accept the same values. To see the 1347 current setting, simply cat the appropriate file. 1348 1349 A few examples will be given here; for specific usage 1350 guidelines for each parameter, see the appropriate section in this 1351 document. 1352 1353 To configure bond0 for balance-alb mode: 1354 # ifconfig bond0 down 1355 # echo 6 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode 1356 - or - 1357 # echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode 1358 NOTE: The bond interface must be down before the mode can be 1359 changed. 1360 1361 To enable MII monitoring on bond0 with a 1 second interval: 1362 # echo 1000 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon 1363 NOTE: If ARP monitoring is enabled, it will disabled when MII 1364 monitoring is enabled, and vice-versa. 1365 1366 To add ARP targets: 1367 # echo +192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target 1368 # echo +192.168.0.101 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target 1369 NOTE: up to 16 target addresses may be specified. 1370 1371 To remove an ARP target: 1372 # echo -192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target 1373 1374 Example Configuration 1375 --------------------- 1376 We begin with the same example that is shown in section 3.3, 1377 executed with sysfs, and without using ifenslave. 1378 1379 To make a simple bond of two e100 devices (presumed to be eth0 1380 and eth1), and have it persist across reboots, edit the appropriate 1381 file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the 1382 following: 1383 1384 modprobe bonding 1385 modprobe e100 1386 echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode 1387 ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up 1388 echo 100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon 1389 echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves 1390 echo +eth1 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves 1391 1392 To add a second bond, with two e1000 interfaces in 1393 active-backup mode, using ARP monitoring, add the following lines to 1394 your init script: 1395 1396 modprobe e1000 1397 echo +bond1 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters 1398 echo active-backup > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/mode 1399 ifconfig bond1 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up 1400 echo +192.168.2.100 /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_ip_target 1401 echo 2000 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_interval 1402 echo +eth2 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves 1403 echo +eth3 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves 1404 1405 3.5 Configuration with Interfaces Support 1406 ----------------------------------------- 1407 1408 This section applies to distros which use /etc/network/interfaces file 1409 to describe network interface configuration, most notably Debian and it's 1410 derivatives. 1411 1412 The ifup and ifdown commands on Debian don't support bonding out of 1413 the box. The ifenslave-2.6 package should be installed to provide bonding 1414 support. Once installed, this package will provide bond-* options to be used 1415 into /etc/network/interfaces. 1416 1417 Note that ifenslave-2.6 package will load the bonding module and use 1418 the ifenslave command when appropriate. 1419 1420 Example Configurations 1421 ---------------------- 1422 1423 In /etc/network/interfaces, the following stanza will configure bond0, in 1424 active-backup mode, with eth0 and eth1 as slaves. 1425 1426 auto bond0 1427 iface bond0 inet dhcp 1428 bond-slaves eth0 eth1 1429 bond-mode active-backup 1430 bond-miimon 100 1431 bond-primary eth0 eth1 1432 1433 If the above configuration doesn't work, you might have a system using 1434 upstart for system startup. This is most notably true for recent 1435 Ubuntu versions. The following stanza in /etc/network/interfaces will 1436 produce the same result on those systems. 1437 1438 auto bond0 1439 iface bond0 inet dhcp 1440 bond-slaves none 1441 bond-mode active-backup 1442 bond-miimon 100 1443 1444 auto eth0 1445 iface eth0 inet manual 1446 bond-master bond0 1447 bond-primary eth0 eth1 1448 1449 auto eth1 1450 iface eth1 inet manual 1451 bond-master bond0 1452 bond-primary eth0 eth1 1453 1454 For a full list of bond-* supported options in /etc/network/interfaces and some 1455 more advanced examples tailored to you particular distros, see the files in 1456 /usr/share/doc/ifenslave-2.6. 1457 1458 3.6 Overriding Configuration for Special Cases 1459 ---------------------------------------------- 1460 1461 When using the bonding driver, the physical port which transmits a frame is 1462 typically selected by the bonding driver, and is not relevant to the user or 1463 system administrator. The output port is simply selected using the policies of 1464 the selected bonding mode. On occasion however, it is helpful to direct certain 1465 classes of traffic to certain physical interfaces on output to implement 1466 slightly more complex policies. For example, to reach a web server over a 1467 bonded interface in which eth0 connects to a private network, while eth1 1468 connects via a public network, it may be desirous to bias the bond to send said 1469 traffic over eth0 first, using eth1 only as a fall back, while all other traffic 1470 can safely be sent over either interface. Such configurations may be achieved 1471 using the traffic control utilities inherent in linux. 1472 1473 By default the bonding driver is multiqueue aware and 16 queues are created 1474 when the driver initializes (see Documentation/networking/multiqueue.txt 1475 for details). If more or less queues are desired the module parameter 1476 tx_queues can be used to change this value. There is no sysfs parameter 1477 available as the allocation is done at module init time. 1478 1479 The output of the file /proc/net/bonding/bondX has changed so the output Queue 1480 ID is now printed for each slave: 1481 1482 Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup) 1483 Primary Slave: None 1484 Currently Active Slave: eth0 1485 MII Status: up 1486 MII Polling Interval (ms): 0 1487 Up Delay (ms): 0 1488 Down Delay (ms): 0 1489 1490 Slave Interface: eth0 1491 MII Status: up 1492 Link Failure Count: 0 1493 Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cb 1494 Slave queue ID: 0 1495 1496 Slave Interface: eth1 1497 MII Status: up 1498 Link Failure Count: 0 1499 Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cc 1500 Slave queue ID: 2 1501 1502 The queue_id for a slave can be set using the command: 1503 1504 # echo "eth1:2" > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/queue_id 1505 1506 Any interface that needs a queue_id set should set it with multiple calls 1507 like the one above until proper priorities are set for all interfaces. On 1508 distributions that allow configuration via initscripts, multiple 'queue_id' 1509 arguments can be added to BONDING_OPTS to set all needed slave queues. 1510 1511 These queue id's can be used in conjunction with the tc utility to configure 1512 a multiqueue qdisc and filters to bias certain traffic to transmit on certain 1513 slave devices. For instance, say we wanted, in the above configuration to 1514 force all traffic bound to 192.168.1.100 to use eth1 in the bond as its output 1515 device. The following commands would accomplish this: 1516 1517 # tc qdisc add dev bond0 handle 1 root multiq 1518 1519 # tc filter add dev bond0 protocol ip parent 1: prio 1 u32 match ip dst \ 1520 192.168.1.100 action skbedit queue_mapping 2 1521 1522 These commands tell the kernel to attach a multiqueue queue discipline to the 1523 bond0 interface and filter traffic enqueued to it, such that packets with a dst 1524 ip of 192.168.1.100 have their output queue mapping value overwritten to 2. 1525 This value is then passed into the driver, causing the normal output path 1526 selection policy to be overridden, selecting instead qid 2, which maps to eth1. 1527 1528 Note that qid values begin at 1. Qid 0 is reserved to initiate to the driver 1529 that normal output policy selection should take place. One benefit to simply 1530 leaving the qid for a slave to 0 is the multiqueue awareness in the bonding 1531 driver that is now present. This awareness allows tc filters to be placed on 1532 slave devices as well as bond devices and the bonding driver will simply act as 1533 a pass-through for selecting output queues on the slave device rather than 1534 output port selection. 1535 1536 This feature first appeared in bonding driver version 3.7.0 and support for 1537 output slave selection was limited to round-robin and active-backup modes. 1538 1539 4 Querying Bonding Configuration 1540 ================================= 1541 1542 4.1 Bonding Configuration 1543 ------------------------- 1544 1545 Each bonding device has a read-only file residing in the 1546 /proc/net/bonding directory. The file contents include information 1547 about the bonding configuration, options and state of each slave. 1548 1549 For example, the contents of /proc/net/bonding/bond0 after the 1550 driver is loaded with parameters of mode=0 and miimon=1000 is 1551 generally as follows: 1552 1553 Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: 2.6.1 (October 29, 2004) 1554 Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin) 1555 Currently Active Slave: eth0 1556 MII Status: up 1557 MII Polling Interval (ms): 1000 1558 Up Delay (ms): 0 1559 Down Delay (ms): 0 1560 1561 Slave Interface: eth1 1562 MII Status: up 1563 Link Failure Count: 1 1564 1565 Slave Interface: eth0 1566 MII Status: up 1567 Link Failure Count: 1 1568 1569 The precise format and contents will change depending upon the 1570 bonding configuration, state, and version of the bonding driver. 1571 1572 4.2 Network configuration 1573 ------------------------- 1574 1575 The network configuration can be inspected using the ifconfig 1576 command. Bonding devices will have the MASTER flag set; Bonding slave 1577 devices will have the SLAVE flag set. The ifconfig output does not 1578 contain information on which slaves are associated with which masters. 1579 1580 In the example below, the bond0 interface is the master 1581 (MASTER) while eth0 and eth1 are slaves (SLAVE). Notice all slaves of 1582 bond0 have the same MAC address (HWaddr) as bond0 for all modes except 1583 TLB and ALB that require a unique MAC address for each slave. 1584 1585 # /sbin/ifconfig 1586 bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4 1587 inet addr:XXX.XXX.XXX.YYY Bcast:XXX.XXX.XXX.255 Mask:255.255.252.0 1588 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 1589 RX packets:7224794 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 1590 TX packets:3286647 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0 1591 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 1592 1593 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4 1594 UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 1595 RX packets:3573025 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 1596 TX packets:1643167 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0 1597 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 1598 Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1080 1599 1600 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4 1601 UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 1602 RX packets:3651769 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 1603 TX packets:1643480 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 1604 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 1605 Interrupt:9 Base address:0x1400 1606 1607 5. Switch Configuration 1608 ======================= 1609 1610 For this section, "switch" refers to whatever system the 1611 bonded devices are directly connected to (i.e., where the other end of 1612 the cable plugs into). This may be an actual dedicated switch device, 1613 or it may be another regular system (e.g., another computer running 1614 Linux), 1615 1616 The active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes do not 1617 require any specific configuration of the switch. 1618 1619 The 802.3ad mode requires that the switch have the appropriate 1620 ports configured as an 802.3ad aggregation. The precise method used 1621 to configure this varies from switch to switch, but, for example, a 1622 Cisco 3550 series switch requires that the appropriate ports first be 1623 grouped together in a single etherchannel instance, then that 1624 etherchannel is set to mode "lacp" to enable 802.3ad (instead of 1625 standard EtherChannel). 1626 1627 The balance-rr, balance-xor and broadcast modes generally 1628 require that the switch have the appropriate ports grouped together. 1629 The nomenclature for such a group differs between switches, it may be 1630 called an "etherchannel" (as in the Cisco example, above), a "trunk 1631 group" or some other similar variation. For these modes, each switch 1632 will also have its own configuration options for the switch's transmit 1633 policy to the bond. Typical choices include XOR of either the MAC or 1634 IP addresses. The transmit policy of the two peers does not need to 1635 match. For these three modes, the bonding mode really selects a 1636 transmit policy for an EtherChannel group; all three will interoperate 1637 with another EtherChannel group. 1638 1639 1640 6. 802.1q VLAN Support 1641 ====================== 1642 1643 It is possible to configure VLAN devices over a bond interface 1644 using the 8021q driver. However, only packets coming from the 8021q 1645 driver and passing through bonding will be tagged by default. Self 1646 generated packets, for example, bonding's learning packets or ARP 1647 packets generated by either ALB mode or the ARP monitor mechanism, are 1648 tagged internally by bonding itself. As a result, bonding must 1649 "learn" the VLAN IDs configured above it, and use those IDs to tag 1650 self generated packets. 1651 1652 For reasons of simplicity, and to support the use of adapters 1653 that can do VLAN hardware acceleration offloading, the bonding 1654 interface declares itself as fully hardware offloading capable, it gets 1655 the add_vid/kill_vid notifications to gather the necessary 1656 information, and it propagates those actions to the slaves. In case 1657 of mixed adapter types, hardware accelerated tagged packets that 1658 should go through an adapter that is not offloading capable are 1659 "un-accelerated" by the bonding driver so the VLAN tag sits in the 1660 regular location. 1661 1662 VLAN interfaces *must* be added on top of a bonding interface 1663 only after enslaving at least one slave. The bonding interface has a 1664 hardware address of 00:00:00:00:00:00 until the first slave is added. 1665 If the VLAN interface is created prior to the first enslavement, it 1666 would pick up the all-zeroes hardware address. Once the first slave 1667 is attached to the bond, the bond device itself will pick up the 1668 slave's hardware address, which is then available for the VLAN device. 1669 1670 Also, be aware that a similar problem can occur if all slaves 1671 are released from a bond that still has one or more VLAN interfaces on 1672 top of it. When a new slave is added, the bonding interface will 1673 obtain its hardware address from the first slave, which might not 1674 match the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces (which was 1675 ultimately copied from an earlier slave). 1676 1677 There are two methods to insure that the VLAN device operates 1678 with the correct hardware address if all slaves are removed from a 1679 bond interface: 1680 1681 1. Remove all VLAN interfaces then recreate them 1682 1683 2. Set the bonding interface's hardware address so that it 1684 matches the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces. 1685 1686 Note that changing a VLAN interface's HW address would set the 1687 underlying device -- i.e. the bonding interface -- to promiscuous 1688 mode, which might not be what you want. 1689 1690 1691 7. Link Monitoring 1692 ================== 1693 1694 The bonding driver at present supports two schemes for 1695 monitoring a slave device's link state: the ARP monitor and the MII 1696 monitor. 1697 1698 At the present time, due to implementation restrictions in the 1699 bonding driver itself, it is not possible to enable both ARP and MII 1700 monitoring simultaneously. 1701 1702 7.1 ARP Monitor Operation 1703 ------------------------- 1704 1705 The ARP monitor operates as its name suggests: it sends ARP 1706 queries to one or more designated peer systems on the network, and 1707 uses the response as an indication that the link is operating. This 1708 gives some assurance that traffic is actually flowing to and from one 1709 or more peers on the local network. 1710 1711 The ARP monitor relies on the device driver itself to verify 1712 that traffic is flowing. In particular, the driver must keep up to 1713 date the last receive time, dev->last_rx, and transmit start time, 1714 dev->trans_start. If these are not updated by the driver, then the 1715 ARP monitor will immediately fail any slaves using that driver, and 1716 those slaves will stay down. If networking monitoring (tcpdump, etc) 1717 shows the ARP requests and replies on the network, then it may be that 1718 your device driver is not updating last_rx and trans_start. 1719 1720 7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets 1721 ------------------------------------ 1722 1723 While ARP monitoring can be done with just one target, it can 1724 be useful in a High Availability setup to have several targets to 1725 monitor. In the case of just one target, the target itself may go 1726 down or have a problem making it unresponsive to ARP requests. Having 1727 an additional target (or several) increases the reliability of the ARP 1728 monitoring. 1729 1730 Multiple ARP targets must be separated by commas as follows: 1731 1732 # example options for ARP monitoring with three targets 1733 alias bond0 bonding 1734 options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.1,192.168.0.3,192.168.0.9 1735 1736 For just a single target the options would resemble: 1737 1738 # example options for ARP monitoring with one target 1739 alias bond0 bonding 1740 options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.100 1741 1742 1743 7.3 MII Monitor Operation 1744 ------------------------- 1745 1746 The MII monitor monitors only the carrier state of the local 1747 network interface. It accomplishes this in one of three ways: by 1748 depending upon the device driver to maintain its carrier state, by 1749 querying the device's MII registers, or by making an ethtool query to 1750 the device. 1751 1752 If the use_carrier module parameter is 1 (the default value), 1753 then the MII monitor will rely on the driver for carrier state 1754 information (via the netif_carrier subsystem). As explained in the 1755 use_carrier parameter information, above, if the MII monitor fails to 1756 detect carrier loss on the device (e.g., when the cable is physically 1757 disconnected), it may be that the driver does not support 1758 netif_carrier. 1759 1760 If use_carrier is 0, then the MII monitor will first query the 1761 device's (via ioctl) MII registers and check the link state. If that 1762 request fails (not just that it returns carrier down), then the MII 1763 monitor will make an ethtool ETHOOL_GLINK request to attempt to obtain 1764 the same information. If both methods fail (i.e., the driver either 1765 does not support or had some error in processing both the MII register 1766 and ethtool requests), then the MII monitor will assume the link is 1767 up. 1768 1769 8. Potential Sources of Trouble 1770 =============================== 1771 1772 8.1 Adventures in Routing 1773 ------------------------- 1774 1775 When bonding is configured, it is important that the slave 1776 devices not have routes that supersede routes of the master (or, 1777 generally, not have routes at all). For example, suppose the bonding 1778 device bond0 has two slaves, eth0 and eth1, and the routing table is 1779 as follows: 1780 1781 Kernel IP routing table 1782 Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface 1783 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 eth0 1784 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 eth1 1785 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 bond0 1786 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 40 0 0 lo 1787 1788 This routing configuration will likely still update the 1789 receive/transmit times in the driver (needed by the ARP monitor), but 1790 may bypass the bonding driver (because outgoing traffic to, in this 1791 case, another host on network 10 would use eth0 or eth1 before bond0). 1792 1793 The ARP monitor (and ARP itself) may become confused by this 1794 configuration, because ARP requests (generated by the ARP monitor) 1795 will be sent on one interface (bond0), but the corresponding reply 1796 will arrive on a different interface (eth0). This reply looks to ARP 1797 as an unsolicited ARP reply (because ARP matches replies on an 1798 interface basis), and is discarded. The MII monitor is not affected 1799 by the state of the routing table. 1800 1801 The solution here is simply to insure that slaves do not have 1802 routes of their own, and if for some reason they must, those routes do 1803 not supersede routes of their master. This should generally be the 1804 case, but unusual configurations or errant manual or automatic static 1805 route additions may cause trouble. 1806 1807 8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming 1808 ---------------------------- 1809 1810 On systems with network configuration scripts that do not 1811 associate physical devices directly with network interface names (so 1812 that the same physical device always has the same "ethX" name), it may 1813 be necessary to add some special logic to config files in 1814 /etc/modprobe.d/. 1815 1816 For example, given a modules.conf containing the following: 1817 1818 alias bond0 bonding 1819 options bond0 mode=some-mode miimon=50 1820 alias eth0 tg3 1821 alias eth1 tg3 1822 alias eth2 e1000 1823 alias eth3 e1000 1824 1825 If neither eth0 and eth1 are slaves to bond0, then when the 1826 bond0 interface comes up, the devices may end up reordered. This 1827 happens because bonding is loaded first, then its slave device's 1828 drivers are loaded next. Since no other drivers have been loaded, 1829 when the e1000 driver loads, it will receive eth0 and eth1 for its 1830 devices, but the bonding configuration tries to enslave eth2 and eth3 1831 (which may later be assigned to the tg3 devices). 1832 1833 Adding the following: 1834 1835 add above bonding e1000 tg3 1836 1837 causes modprobe to load e1000 then tg3, in that order, when 1838 bonding is loaded. This command is fully documented in the 1839 modules.conf manual page. 1840 1841 On systems utilizing modprobe an equivalent problem can occur. 1842 In this case, the following can be added to config files in 1843 /etc/modprobe.d/ as: 1844 1845 softdep bonding pre: tg3 e1000 1846 1847 This will load tg3 and e1000 modules before loading the bonding one. 1848 Full documentation on this can be found in the modprobe.d and modprobe 1849 manual pages. 1850 1851 8.3. Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon 1852 --------------------------------------------------------- 1853 1854 By default, bonding enables the use_carrier option, which 1855 instructs bonding to trust the driver to maintain carrier state. 1856 1857 As discussed in the options section, above, some drivers do 1858 not support the netif_carrier_on/_off link state tracking system. 1859 With use_carrier enabled, bonding will always see these links as up, 1860 regardless of their actual state. 1861 1862 Additionally, other drivers do support netif_carrier, but do 1863 not maintain it in real time, e.g., only polling the link state at 1864 some fixed interval. In this case, miimon will detect failures, but 1865 only after some long period of time has expired. If it appears that 1866 miimon is very slow in detecting link failures, try specifying 1867 use_carrier=0 to see if that improves the failure detection time. If 1868 it does, then it may be that the driver checks the carrier state at a 1869 fixed interval, but does not cache the MII register values (so the 1870 use_carrier=0 method of querying the registers directly works). If 1871 use_carrier=0 does not improve the failover, then the driver may cache 1872 the registers, or the problem may be elsewhere. 1873 1874 Also, remember that miimon only checks for the device's 1875 carrier state. It has no way to determine the state of devices on or 1876 beyond other ports of a switch, or if a switch is refusing to pass 1877 traffic while still maintaining carrier on. 1878 1879 9. SNMP agents 1880 =============== 1881 1882 If running SNMP agents, the bonding driver should be loaded 1883 before any network drivers participating in a bond. This requirement 1884 is due to the interface index (ipAdEntIfIndex) being associated to 1885 the first interface found with a given IP address. That is, there is 1886 only one ipAdEntIfIndex for each IP address. For example, if eth0 and 1887 eth1 are slaves of bond0 and the driver for eth0 is loaded before the 1888 bonding driver, the interface for the IP address will be associated 1889 with the eth0 interface. This configuration is shown below, the IP 1890 address 192.168.1.1 has an interface index of 2 which indexes to eth0 1891 in the ifDescr table (ifDescr.2). 1892 1893 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo 1894 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = eth0 1895 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth1 1896 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth2 1897 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth3 1898 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = bond0 1899 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 5 1900 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2 1901 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 4 1902 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1 1903 1904 This problem is avoided by loading the bonding driver before 1905 any network drivers participating in a bond. Below is an example of 1906 loading the bonding driver first, the IP address 192.168.1.1 is 1907 correctly associated with ifDescr.2. 1908 1909 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo 1910 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = bond0 1911 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth0 1912 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth1 1913 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth2 1914 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = eth3 1915 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 6 1916 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2 1917 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 5 1918 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1 1919 1920 While some distributions may not report the interface name in 1921 ifDescr, the association between the IP address and IfIndex remains 1922 and SNMP functions such as Interface_Scan_Next will report that 1923 association. 1924 1925 10. Promiscuous mode 1926 ==================== 1927 1928 When running network monitoring tools, e.g., tcpdump, it is 1929 common to enable promiscuous mode on the device, so that all traffic 1930 is seen (instead of seeing only traffic destined for the local host). 1931 The bonding driver handles promiscuous mode changes to the bonding 1932 master device (e.g., bond0), and propagates the setting to the slave 1933 devices. 1934 1935 For the balance-rr, balance-xor, broadcast, and 802.3ad modes, 1936 the promiscuous mode setting is propagated to all slaves. 1937 1938 For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, the 1939 promiscuous mode setting is propagated only to the active slave. 1940 1941 For balance-tlb mode, the active slave is the slave currently 1942 receiving inbound traffic. 1943 1944 For balance-alb mode, the active slave is the slave used as a 1945 "primary." This slave is used for mode-specific control traffic, for 1946 sending to peers that are unassigned or if the load is unbalanced. 1947 1948 For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, when 1949 the active slave changes (e.g., due to a link failure), the 1950 promiscuous setting will be propagated to the new active slave. 1951 1952 11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability 1953 ============================================= 1954 1955 High Availability refers to configurations that provide 1956 maximum network availability by having redundant or backup devices, 1957 links or switches between the host and the rest of the world. The 1958 goal is to provide the maximum availability of network connectivity 1959 (i.e., the network always works), even though other configurations 1960 could provide higher throughput. 1961 1962 11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology 1963 -------------------------------------------------- 1964 1965 If two hosts (or a host and a single switch) are directly 1966 connected via multiple physical links, then there is no availability 1967 penalty to optimizing for maximum bandwidth. In this case, there is 1968 only one switch (or peer), so if it fails, there is no alternative 1969 access to fail over to. Additionally, the bonding load balance modes 1970 support link monitoring of their members, so if individual links fail, 1971 the load will be rebalanced across the remaining devices. 1972 1973 See Section 12, "Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput" 1974 for information on configuring bonding with one peer device. 1975 1976 11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology 1977 ---------------------------------------------------- 1978 1979 With multiple switches, the configuration of bonding and the 1980 network changes dramatically. In multiple switch topologies, there is 1981 a trade off between network availability and usable bandwidth. 1982 1983 Below is a sample network, configured to maximize the 1984 availability of the network: 1985 1986 | | 1987 |port3 port3| 1988 +-----+----+ +-----+----+ 1989 | |port2 ISL port2| | 1990 | switch A +--------------------------+ switch B | 1991 | | | | 1992 +-----+----+ +-----++---+ 1993 |port1 port1| 1994 | +-------+ | 1995 +-------------+ host1 +---------------+ 1996 eth0 +-------+ eth1 1997 1998 In this configuration, there is a link between the two 1999 switches (ISL, or inter switch link), and multiple ports connecting to 2000 the outside world ("port3" on each switch). There is no technical 2001 reason that this could not be extended to a third switch. 2002 2003 11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------- 2005 2006 In a topology such as the example above, the active-backup and 2007 broadcast modes are the only useful bonding modes when optimizing for 2008 availability; the other modes require all links to terminate on the 2009 same peer for them to behave rationally. 2010 2011 active-backup: This is generally the preferred mode, particularly if 2012 the switches have an ISL and play together well. If the 2013 network configuration is such that one switch is specifically 2014 a backup switch (e.g., has lower capacity, higher cost, etc), 2015 then the primary option can be used to insure that the 2016 preferred link is always used when it is available. 2017 2018 broadcast: This mode is really a special purpose mode, and is suitable 2019 only for very specific needs. For example, if the two 2020 switches are not connected (no ISL), and the networks beyond 2021 them are totally independent. In this case, if it is 2022 necessary for some specific one-way traffic to reach both 2023 independent networks, then the broadcast mode may be suitable. 2024 2025 11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring Selection for Multiple Switch Topology 2026 ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2027 2028 The choice of link monitoring ultimately depends upon your 2029 switch. If the switch can reliably fail ports in response to other 2030 failures, then either the MII or ARP monitors should work. For 2031 example, in the above example, if the "port3" link fails at the remote 2032 end, the MII monitor has no direct means to detect this. The ARP 2033 monitor could be configured with a target at the remote end of port3, 2034 thus detecting that failure without switch support. 2035 2036 In general, however, in a multiple switch topology, the ARP 2037 monitor can provide a higher level of reliability in detecting end to 2038 end connectivity failures (which may be caused by the failure of any 2039 individual component to pass traffic for any reason). Additionally, 2040 the ARP monitor should be configured with multiple targets (at least 2041 one for each switch in the network). This will insure that, 2042 regardless of which switch is active, the ARP monitor has a suitable 2043 target to query. 2044 2045 Note, also, that of late many switches now support a functionality 2046 generally referred to as "trunk failover." This is a feature of the 2047 switch that causes the link state of a particular switch port to be set 2048 down (or up) when the state of another switch port goes down (or up). 2049 Its purpose is to propagate link failures from logically "exterior" ports 2050 to the logically "interior" ports that bonding is able to monitor via 2051 miimon. Availability and configuration for trunk failover varies by 2052 switch, but this can be a viable alternative to the ARP monitor when using 2053 suitable switches. 2054 2055 12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput 2056 ============================================== 2057 2058 12.1 Maximizing Throughput in a Single Switch Topology 2059 ------------------------------------------------------ 2060 2061 In a single switch configuration, the best method to maximize 2062 throughput depends upon the application and network environment. The 2063 various load balancing modes each have strengths and weaknesses in 2064 different environments, as detailed below. 2065 2066 For this discussion, we will break down the topologies into 2067 two categories. Depending upon the destination of most traffic, we 2068 categorize them into either "gatewayed" or "local" configurations. 2069 2070 In a gatewayed configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily 2071 as a router, and the majority of traffic passes through this router to 2072 other networks. An example would be the following: 2073 2074 2075 +----------+ +----------+ 2076 | |eth0 port1| | to other networks 2077 | Host A +---------------------+ router +-------------------> 2078 | +---------------------+ | Hosts B and C are out 2079 | |eth1 port2| | here somewhere 2080 +----------+ +----------+ 2081 2082 The router may be a dedicated router device, or another host 2083 acting as a gateway. For our discussion, the important point is that 2084 the majority of traffic from Host A will pass through the router to 2085 some other network before reaching its final destination. 2086 2087 In a gatewayed network configuration, although Host A may 2088 communicate with many other systems, all of its traffic will be sent 2089 and received via one other peer on the local network, the router. 2090 2091 Note that the case of two systems connected directly via 2092 multiple physical links is, for purposes of configuring bonding, the 2093 same as a gatewayed configuration. In that case, it happens that all 2094 traffic is destined for the "gateway" itself, not some other network 2095 beyond the gateway. 2096 2097 In a local configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily as 2098 a switch, and the majority of traffic passes through this switch to 2099 reach other stations on the same network. An example would be the 2100 following: 2101 2102 +----------+ +----------+ +--------+ 2103 | |eth0 port1| +-------+ Host B | 2104 | Host A +------------+ switch |port3 +--------+ 2105 | +------------+ | +--------+ 2106 | |eth1 port2| +------------------+ Host C | 2107 +----------+ +----------+port4 +--------+ 2108 2109 2110 Again, the switch may be a dedicated switch device, or another 2111 host acting as a gateway. For our discussion, the important point is 2112 that the majority of traffic from Host A is destined for other hosts 2113 on the same local network (Hosts B and C in the above example). 2114 2115 In summary, in a gatewayed configuration, traffic to and from 2116 the bonded device will be to the same MAC level peer on the network 2117 (the gateway itself, i.e., the router), regardless of its final 2118 destination. In a local configuration, traffic flows directly to and 2119 from the final destinations, thus, each destination (Host B, Host C) 2120 will be addressed directly by their individual MAC addresses. 2121 2122 This distinction between a gatewayed and a local network 2123 configuration is important because many of the load balancing modes 2124 available use the MAC addresses of the local network source and 2125 destination to make load balancing decisions. The behavior of each 2126 mode is described below. 2127 2128 2129 12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology 2130 ----------------------------------------------------------- 2131 2132 This configuration is the easiest to set up and to understand, 2133 although you will have to decide which bonding mode best suits your 2134 needs. The trade offs for each mode are detailed below: 2135 2136 balance-rr: This mode is the only mode that will permit a single 2137 TCP/IP connection to stripe traffic across multiple 2138 interfaces. It is therefore the only mode that will allow a 2139 single TCP/IP stream to utilize more than one interface's 2140 worth of throughput. This comes at a cost, however: the 2141 striping generally results in peer systems receiving packets out 2142 of order, causing TCP/IP's congestion control system to kick 2143 in, often by retransmitting segments. 2144 2145 It is possible to adjust TCP/IP's congestion limits by 2146 altering the net.ipv4.tcp_reordering sysctl parameter. The 2147 usual default value is 3, and the maximum useful value is 127. 2148 For a four interface balance-rr bond, expect that a single 2149 TCP/IP stream will utilize no more than approximately 2.3 2150 interface's worth of throughput, even after adjusting 2151 tcp_reordering. 2152 2153 Note that the fraction of packets that will be delivered out of 2154 order is highly variable, and is unlikely to be zero. The level 2155 of reordering depends upon a variety of factors, including the 2156 networking interfaces, the switch, and the topology of the 2157 configuration. Speaking in general terms, higher speed network 2158 cards produce more reordering (due to factors such as packet 2159 coalescing), and a "many to many" topology will reorder at a 2160 higher rate than a "many slow to one fast" configuration. 2161 2162 Many switches do not support any modes that stripe traffic 2163 (instead choosing a port based upon IP or MAC level addresses); 2164 for those devices, traffic for a particular connection flowing 2165 through the switch to a balance-rr bond will not utilize greater 2166 than one interface's worth of bandwidth. 2167 2168 If you are utilizing protocols other than TCP/IP, UDP for 2169 example, and your application can tolerate out of order 2170 delivery, then this mode can allow for single stream datagram 2171 performance that scales near linearly as interfaces are added 2172 to the bond. 2173 2174 This mode requires the switch to have the appropriate ports 2175 configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking." 2176 2177 active-backup: There is not much advantage in this network topology to 2178 the active-backup mode, as the inactive backup devices are all 2179 connected to the same peer as the primary. In this case, a 2180 load balancing mode (with link monitoring) will provide the 2181 same level of network availability, but with increased 2182 available bandwidth. On the plus side, active-backup mode 2183 does not require any configuration of the switch, so it may 2184 have value if the hardware available does not support any of 2185 the load balance modes. 2186 2187 balance-xor: This mode will limit traffic such that packets destined 2188 for specific peers will always be sent over the same 2189 interface. Since the destination is determined by the MAC 2190 addresses involved, this mode works best in a "local" network 2191 configuration (as described above), with destinations all on 2192 the same local network. This mode is likely to be suboptimal 2193 if all your traffic is passed through a single router (i.e., a 2194 "gatewayed" network configuration, as described above). 2195 2196 As with balance-rr, the switch ports need to be configured for 2197 "etherchannel" or "trunking." 2198 2199 broadcast: Like active-backup, there is not much advantage to this 2200 mode in this type of network topology. 2201 2202 802.3ad: This mode can be a good choice for this type of network 2203 topology. The 802.3ad mode is an IEEE standard, so all peers 2204 that implement 802.3ad should interoperate well. The 802.3ad 2205 protocol includes automatic configuration of the aggregates, 2206 so minimal manual configuration of the switch is needed 2207 (typically only to designate that some set of devices is 2208 available for 802.3ad). The 802.3ad standard also mandates 2209 that frames be delivered in order (within certain limits), so 2210 in general single connections will not see misordering of 2211 packets. The 802.3ad mode does have some drawbacks: the 2212 standard mandates that all devices in the aggregate operate at 2213 the same speed and duplex. Also, as with all bonding load 2214 balance modes other than balance-rr, no single connection will 2215 be able to utilize more than a single interface's worth of 2216 bandwidth. 2217 2218 Additionally, the linux bonding 802.3ad implementation 2219 distributes traffic by peer (using an XOR of MAC addresses), 2220 so in a "gatewayed" configuration, all outgoing traffic will 2221 generally use the same device. Incoming traffic may also end 2222 up on a single device, but that is dependent upon the 2223 balancing policy of the peer's 8023.ad implementation. In a 2224 "local" configuration, traffic will be distributed across the 2225 devices in the bond. 2226 2227 Finally, the 802.3ad mode mandates the use of the MII monitor, 2228 therefore, the ARP monitor is not available in this mode. 2229 2230 balance-tlb: The balance-tlb mode balances outgoing traffic by peer. 2231 Since the balancing is done according to MAC address, in a 2232 "gatewayed" configuration (as described above), this mode will 2233 send all traffic across a single device. However, in a 2234 "local" network configuration, this mode balances multiple 2235 local network peers across devices in a vaguely intelligent 2236 manner (not a simple XOR as in balance-xor or 802.3ad mode), 2237 so that mathematically unlucky MAC addresses (i.e., ones that 2238 XOR to the same value) will not all "bunch up" on a single 2239 interface. 2240 2241 Unlike 802.3ad, interfaces may be of differing speeds, and no 2242 special switch configuration is required. On the down side, 2243 in this mode all incoming traffic arrives over a single 2244 interface, this mode requires certain ethtool support in the 2245 network device driver of the slave interfaces, and the ARP 2246 monitor is not available. 2247 2248 balance-alb: This mode is everything that balance-tlb is, and more. 2249 It has all of the features (and restrictions) of balance-tlb, 2250 and will also balance incoming traffic from local network 2251 peers (as described in the Bonding Module Options section, 2252 above). 2253 2254 The only additional down side to this mode is that the network 2255 device driver must support changing the hardware address while 2256 the device is open. 2257 2258 12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology 2259 ---------------------------------------------------- 2260 2261 The choice of link monitoring may largely depend upon which 2262 mode you choose to use. The more advanced load balancing modes do not 2263 support the use of the ARP monitor, and are thus restricted to using 2264 the MII monitor (which does not provide as high a level of end to end 2265 assurance as the ARP monitor). 2266 2267 12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology 2268 ----------------------------------------------------- 2269 2270 Multiple switches may be utilized to optimize for throughput 2271 when they are configured in parallel as part of an isolated network 2272 between two or more systems, for example: 2273 2274 +-----------+ 2275 | Host A | 2276 +-+---+---+-+ 2277 | | | 2278 +--------+ | +---------+ 2279 | | | 2280 +------+---+ +-----+----+ +-----+----+ 2281 | Switch A | | Switch B | | Switch C | 2282 +------+---+ +-----+----+ +-----+----+ 2283 | | | 2284 +--------+ | +---------+ 2285 | | | 2286 +-+---+---+-+ 2287 | Host B | 2288 +-----------+ 2289 2290 In this configuration, the switches are isolated from one 2291 another. One reason to employ a topology such as this is for an 2292 isolated network with many hosts (a cluster configured for high 2293 performance, for example), using multiple smaller switches can be more 2294 cost effective than a single larger switch, e.g., on a network with 24 2295 hosts, three 24 port switches can be significantly less expensive than 2296 a single 72 port switch. 2297 2298 If access beyond the network is required, an individual host 2299 can be equipped with an additional network device connected to an 2300 external network; this host then additionally acts as a gateway. 2301 2302 12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology 2303 ------------------------------------------------------------- 2304 2305 In actual practice, the bonding mode typically employed in 2306 configurations of this type is balance-rr. Historically, in this 2307 network configuration, the usual caveats about out of order packet 2308 delivery are mitigated by the use of network adapters that do not do 2309 any kind of packet coalescing (via the use of NAPI, or because the 2310 device itself does not generate interrupts until some number of 2311 packets has arrived). When employed in this fashion, the balance-rr 2312 mode allows individual connections between two hosts to effectively 2313 utilize greater than one interface's bandwidth. 2314 2315 12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology 2316 ------------------------------------------------------ 2317 2318 Again, in actual practice, the MII monitor is most often used 2319 in this configuration, as performance is given preference over 2320 availability. The ARP monitor will function in this topology, but its 2321 advantages over the MII monitor are mitigated by the volume of probes 2322 needed as the number of systems involved grows (remember that each 2323 host in the network is configured with bonding). 2324 2325 13. Switch Behavior Issues 2326 ========================== 2327 2328 13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays 2329 ------------------------------------------- 2330 2331 Some switches exhibit undesirable behavior with regard to the 2332 timing of link up and down reporting by the switch. 2333 2334 First, when a link comes up, some switches may indicate that 2335 the link is up (carrier available), but not pass traffic over the 2336 interface for some period of time. This delay is typically due to 2337 some type of autonegotiation or routing protocol, but may also occur 2338 during switch initialization (e.g., during recovery after a switch 2339 failure). If you find this to be a problem, specify an appropriate 2340 value to the updelay bonding module option to delay the use of the 2341 relevant interface(s). 2342 2343 Second, some switches may "bounce" the link state one or more 2344 times while a link is changing state. This occurs most commonly while 2345 the switch is initializing. Again, an appropriate updelay value may 2346 help. 2347 2348 Note that when a bonding interface has no active links, the 2349 driver will immediately reuse the first link that goes up, even if the 2350 updelay parameter has been specified (the updelay is ignored in this 2351 case). If there are slave interfaces waiting for the updelay timeout 2352 to expire, the interface that first went into that state will be 2353 immediately reused. This reduces down time of the network if the 2354 value of updelay has been overestimated, and since this occurs only in 2355 cases with no connectivity, there is no additional penalty for 2356 ignoring the updelay. 2357 2358 In addition to the concerns about switch timings, if your 2359 switches take a long time to go into backup mode, it may be desirable 2360 to not activate a backup interface immediately after a link goes down. 2361 Failover may be delayed via the downdelay bonding module option. 2362 2363 13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets 2364 -------------------------------- 2365 2366 NOTE: Starting with version 3.0.2, the bonding driver has logic to 2367 suppress duplicate packets, which should largely eliminate this problem. 2368 The following description is kept for reference. 2369 2370 It is not uncommon to observe a short burst of duplicated 2371 traffic when the bonding device is first used, or after it has been 2372 idle for some period of time. This is most easily observed by issuing 2373 a "ping" to some other host on the network, and noticing that the 2374 output from ping flags duplicates (typically one per slave). 2375 2376 For example, on a bond in active-backup mode with five slaves 2377 all connected to one switch, the output may appear as follows: 2378 2379 # ping -n 10.0.4.2 2380 PING 10.0.4.2 (10.0.4.2) from 10.0.3.10 : 56(84) bytes of data. 2381 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.7 ms 2382 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!) 2383 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!) 2384 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!) 2385 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!) 2386 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.216 ms 2387 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.267 ms 2388 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.222 ms 2389 2390 This is not due to an error in the bonding driver, rather, it 2391 is a side effect of how many switches update their MAC forwarding 2392 tables. Initially, the switch does not associate the MAC address in 2393 the packet with a particular switch port, and so it may send the 2394 traffic to all ports until its MAC forwarding table is updated. Since 2395 the interfaces attached to the bond may occupy multiple ports on a 2396 single switch, when the switch (temporarily) floods the traffic to all 2397 ports, the bond device receives multiple copies of the same packet 2398 (one per slave device). 2399 2400 The duplicated packet behavior is switch dependent, some 2401 switches exhibit this, and some do not. On switches that display this 2402 behavior, it can be induced by clearing the MAC forwarding table (on 2403 most Cisco switches, the privileged command "clear mac address-table 2404 dynamic" will accomplish this). 2405 2406 14. Hardware Specific Considerations 2407 ==================================== 2408 2409 This section contains additional information for configuring 2410 bonding on specific hardware platforms, or for interfacing bonding 2411 with particular switches or other devices. 2412 2413 14.1 IBM BladeCenter 2414 -------------------- 2415 2416 This applies to the JS20 and similar systems. 2417 2418 On the JS20 blades, the bonding driver supports only 2419 balance-rr, active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes. This is 2420 largely due to the network topology inside the BladeCenter, detailed 2421 below. 2422 2423 JS20 network adapter information 2424 -------------------------------- 2425 2426 All JS20s come with two Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet ports 2427 integrated on the planar (that's "motherboard" in IBM-speak). In the 2428 BladeCenter chassis, the eth0 port of all JS20 blades is hard wired to 2429 I/O Module #1; similarly, all eth1 ports are wired to I/O Module #2. 2430 An add-on Broadcom daughter card can be installed on a JS20 to provide 2431 two more Gigabit Ethernet ports. These ports, eth2 and eth3, are 2432 wired to I/O Modules 3 and 4, respectively. 2433 2434 Each I/O Module may contain either a switch or a passthrough 2435 module (which allows ports to be directly connected to an external 2436 switch). Some bonding modes require a specific BladeCenter internal 2437 network topology in order to function; these are detailed below. 2438 2439 Additional BladeCenter-specific networking information can be 2440 found in two IBM Redbooks (www.ibm.com/redbooks): 2441 2442 "IBM eServer BladeCenter Networking Options" 2443 "IBM eServer BladeCenter Layer 2-7 Network Switching" 2444 2445 BladeCenter networking configuration 2446 ------------------------------------ 2447 2448 Because a BladeCenter can be configured in a very large number 2449 of ways, this discussion will be confined to describing basic 2450 configurations. 2451 2452 Normally, Ethernet Switch Modules (ESMs) are used in I/O 2453 modules 1 and 2. In this configuration, the eth0 and eth1 ports of a 2454 JS20 will be connected to different internal switches (in the 2455 respective I/O modules). 2456 2457 A passthrough module (OPM or CPM, optical or copper, 2458 passthrough module) connects the I/O module directly to an external 2459 switch. By using PMs in I/O module #1 and #2, the eth0 and eth1 2460 interfaces of a JS20 can be redirected to the outside world and 2461 connected to a common external switch. 2462 2463 Depending upon the mix of ESMs and PMs, the network will 2464 appear to bonding as either a single switch topology (all PMs) or as a 2465 multiple switch topology (one or more ESMs, zero or more PMs). It is 2466 also possible to connect ESMs together, resulting in a configuration 2467 much like the example in "High Availability in a Multiple Switch 2468 Topology," above. 2469 2470 Requirements for specific modes 2471 ------------------------------- 2472 2473 The balance-rr mode requires the use of passthrough modules 2474 for devices in the bond, all connected to an common external switch. 2475 That switch must be configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking" on the 2476 appropriate ports, as is usual for balance-rr. 2477 2478 The balance-alb and balance-tlb modes will function with 2479 either switch modules or passthrough modules (or a mix). The only 2480 specific requirement for these modes is that all network interfaces 2481 must be able to reach all destinations for traffic sent over the 2482 bonding device (i.e., the network must converge at some point outside 2483 the BladeCenter). 2484 2485 The active-backup mode has no additional requirements. 2486 2487 Link monitoring issues 2488 ---------------------- 2489 2490 When an Ethernet Switch Module is in place, only the ARP 2491 monitor will reliably detect link loss to an external switch. This is 2492 nothing unusual, but examination of the BladeCenter cabinet would 2493 suggest that the "external" network ports are the ethernet ports for 2494 the system, when it fact there is a switch between these "external" 2495 ports and the devices on the JS20 system itself. The MII monitor is 2496 only able to detect link failures between the ESM and the JS20 system. 2497 2498 When a passthrough module is in place, the MII monitor does 2499 detect failures to the "external" port, which is then directly 2500 connected to the JS20 system. 2501 2502 Other concerns 2503 -------------- 2504 2505 The Serial Over LAN (SoL) link is established over the primary 2506 ethernet (eth0) only, therefore, any loss of link to eth0 will result 2507 in losing your SoL connection. It will not fail over with other 2508 network traffic, as the SoL system is beyond the control of the 2509 bonding driver. 2510 2511 It may be desirable to disable spanning tree on the switch 2512 (either the internal Ethernet Switch Module, or an external switch) to 2513 avoid fail-over delay issues when using bonding. 2514 2515 2516 15. Frequently Asked Questions 2517 ============================== 2518 2519 1. Is it SMP safe? 2520 2521 Yes. The old 2.0.xx channel bonding patch was not SMP safe. 2522 The new driver was designed to be SMP safe from the start. 2523 2524 2. What type of cards will work with it? 2525 2526 Any Ethernet type cards (you can even mix cards - a Intel 2527 EtherExpress PRO/100 and a 3com 3c905b, for example). For most modes, 2528 devices need not be of the same speed. 2529 2530 Starting with version 3.2.1, bonding also supports Infiniband 2531 slaves in active-backup mode. 2532 2533 3. How many bonding devices can I have? 2534 2535 There is no limit. 2536 2537 4. How many slaves can a bonding device have? 2538 2539 This is limited only by the number of network interfaces Linux 2540 supports and/or the number of network cards you can place in your 2541 system. 2542 2543 5. What happens when a slave link dies? 2544 2545 If link monitoring is enabled, then the failing device will be 2546 disabled. The active-backup mode will fail over to a backup link, and 2547 other modes will ignore the failed link. The link will continue to be 2548 monitored, and should it recover, it will rejoin the bond (in whatever 2549 manner is appropriate for the mode). See the sections on High 2550 Availability and the documentation for each mode for additional 2551 information. 2552 2553 Link monitoring can be enabled via either the miimon or 2554 arp_interval parameters (described in the module parameters section, 2555 above). In general, miimon monitors the carrier state as sensed by 2556 the underlying network device, and the arp monitor (arp_interval) 2557 monitors connectivity to another host on the local network. 2558 2559 If no link monitoring is configured, the bonding driver will 2560 be unable to detect link failures, and will assume that all links are 2561 always available. This will likely result in lost packets, and a 2562 resulting degradation of performance. The precise performance loss 2563 depends upon the bonding mode and network configuration. 2564 2565 6. Can bonding be used for High Availability? 2566 2567 Yes. See the section on High Availability for details. 2568 2569 7. Which switches/systems does it work with? 2570 2571 The full answer to this depends upon the desired mode. 2572 2573 In the basic balance modes (balance-rr and balance-xor), it 2574 works with any system that supports etherchannel (also called 2575 trunking). Most managed switches currently available have such 2576 support, and many unmanaged switches as well. 2577 2578 The advanced balance modes (balance-tlb and balance-alb) do 2579 not have special switch requirements, but do need device drivers that 2580 support specific features (described in the appropriate section under 2581 module parameters, above). 2582 2583 In 802.3ad mode, it works with systems that support IEEE 2584 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation. Most managed and many unmanaged 2585 switches currently available support 802.3ad. 2586 2587 The active-backup mode should work with any Layer-II switch. 2588 2589 8. Where does a bonding device get its MAC address from? 2590 2591 When using slave devices that have fixed MAC addresses, or when 2592 the fail_over_mac option is enabled, the bonding device's MAC address is 2593 the MAC address of the active slave. 2594 2595 For other configurations, if not explicitly configured (with 2596 ifconfig or ip link), the MAC address of the bonding device is taken from 2597 its first slave device. This MAC address is then passed to all following 2598 slaves and remains persistent (even if the first slave is removed) until 2599 the bonding device is brought down or reconfigured. 2600 2601 If you wish to change the MAC address, you can set it with 2602 ifconfig or ip link: 2603 2604 # ifconfig bond0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55 2605 2606 # ip link set bond0 address 66:77:88:99:aa:bb 2607 2608 The MAC address can be also changed by bringing down/up the 2609 device and then changing its slaves (or their order): 2610 2611 # ifconfig bond0 down ; modprobe -r bonding 2612 # ifconfig bond0 .... up 2613 # ifenslave bond0 eth... 2614 2615 This method will automatically take the address from the next 2616 slave that is added. 2617 2618 To restore your slaves' MAC addresses, you need to detach them 2619 from the bond (`ifenslave -d bond0 eth0'). The bonding driver will 2620 then restore the MAC addresses that the slaves had before they were 2621 enslaved. 2622 2623 16. Resources and Links 2624 ======================= 2625 2626 The latest version of the bonding driver can be found in the latest 2627 version of the linux kernel, found on http://kernel.org 2628 2629 The latest version of this document can be found in the latest kernel 2630 source (named Documentation/networking/bonding.txt). 2631 2632 Discussions regarding the usage of the bonding driver take place on the 2633 bonding-devel mailing list, hosted at sourceforge.net. If you have questions or 2634 problems, post them to the list. The list address is: 2635 2636 bonding-devel@lists.sourceforge.net 2637 2638 The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can 2639 be found at: 2640 2641 https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bonding-devel 2642 2643 Discussions regarding the development of the bonding driver take place 2644 on the main Linux network mailing list, hosted at vger.kernel.org. The list 2645 address is: 2646 2647 netdev@vger.kernel.org 2648 2649 The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can 2650 be found at: 2651 2652 http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#netdev 2653 2654 Donald Becker's Ethernet Drivers and diag programs may be found at : 2655 - http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.scyld.com/network/ 2656 2657 You will also find a lot of information regarding Ethernet, NWay, MII, 2658 etc. at www.scyld.com. 2659 2660 -- END --