Based on kernel version 3.2. Page generated on 2012-01-05 23:29 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/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf configuration file, or in a 177 distro-specific configuration file (some of which are detailed in the next 178 section). 179 180 Details on bonding support for sysfs is provided in the 181 "Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs" section, below. 182 183 The available bonding driver parameters are listed below. If a 184 parameter is not specified the default value is used. When initially 185 configuring a bond, it is recommended "tail -f /var/log/messages" be 186 run in a separate window to watch for bonding driver error messages. 187 188 It is critical that either the miimon or arp_interval and 189 arp_ip_target parameters be specified, otherwise serious network 190 degradation will occur during link failures. Very few devices do not 191 support at least miimon, so there is really no reason not to use it. 192 193 Options with textual values will accept either the text name 194 or, for backwards compatibility, the option value. E.g., 195 "mode=802.3ad" and "mode=4" set the same mode. 196 197 The parameters are as follows: 198 199 ad_select 200 201 Specifies the 802.3ad aggregation selection logic to use. The 202 possible values and their effects are: 203 204 stable or 0 205 206 The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate 207 bandwidth. 208 209 Reselection of the active aggregator occurs only when all 210 slaves of the active aggregator are down or the active 211 aggregator has no slaves. 212 213 This is the default value. 214 215 bandwidth or 1 216 217 The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate 218 bandwidth. Reselection occurs if: 219 220 - A slave is added to or removed from the bond 221 222 - Any slave's link state changes 223 224 - Any slave's 802.3ad association state changes 225 226 - The bond's administrative state changes to up 227 228 count or 2 229 230 The active aggregator is chosen by the largest number of 231 ports (slaves). Reselection occurs as described under the 232 "bandwidth" setting, above. 233 234 The bandwidth and count selection policies permit failover of 235 802.3ad aggregations when partial failure of the active aggregator 236 occurs. This keeps the aggregator with the highest availability 237 (either in bandwidth or in number of ports) active at all times. 238 239 This option was added in bonding version 3.4.0. 240 241 all_slaves_active 242 243 Specifies that duplicate frames (received on inactive ports) should be 244 dropped (0) or delivered (1). 245 246 Normally, bonding will drop duplicate frames (received on inactive 247 ports), which is desirable for most users. But there are some times 248 it is nice to allow duplicate frames to be delivered. 249 250 The default value is 0 (drop duplicate frames received on inactive 251 ports). 252 253 arp_interval 254 255 Specifies the ARP link monitoring frequency in milliseconds. 256 257 The ARP monitor works by periodically checking the slave 258 devices to determine whether they have sent or received 259 traffic recently (the precise criteria depends upon the 260 bonding mode, and the state of the slave). Regular traffic is 261 generated via ARP probes issued for the addresses specified by 262 the arp_ip_target option. 263 264 This behavior can be modified by the arp_validate option, 265 below. 266 267 If ARP monitoring is used in an etherchannel compatible mode 268 (modes 0 and 2), the switch should be configured in a mode 269 that evenly distributes packets across all links. If the 270 switch is configured to distribute the packets in an XOR 271 fashion, all replies from the ARP targets will be received on 272 the same link which could cause the other team members to 273 fail. ARP monitoring should not be used in conjunction with 274 miimon. A value of 0 disables ARP monitoring. The default 275 value is 0. 276 277 arp_ip_target 278 279 Specifies the IP addresses to use as ARP monitoring peers when 280 arp_interval is > 0. These are the targets of the ARP request 281 sent to determine the health of the link to the targets. 282 Specify these values in ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd format. Multiple IP 283 addresses must be separated by a comma. At least one IP 284 address must be given for ARP monitoring to function. The 285 maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16. The 286 default value is no IP addresses. 287 288 arp_validate 289 290 Specifies whether or not ARP probes and replies should be 291 validated in the active-backup mode. This causes the ARP 292 monitor to examine the incoming ARP requests and replies, and 293 only consider a slave to be up if it is receiving the 294 appropriate ARP traffic. 295 296 Possible values are: 297 298 none or 0 299 300 No validation is performed. This is the default. 301 302 active or 1 303 304 Validation is performed only for the active slave. 305 306 backup or 2 307 308 Validation is performed only for backup slaves. 309 310 all or 3 311 312 Validation is performed for all slaves. 313 314 For the active slave, the validation checks ARP replies to 315 confirm that they were generated by an arp_ip_target. Since 316 backup slaves do not typically receive these replies, the 317 validation performed for backup slaves is on the ARP request 318 sent out via the active slave. It is possible that some 319 switch or network configurations may result in situations 320 wherein the backup slaves do not receive the ARP requests; in 321 such a situation, validation of backup slaves must be 322 disabled. 323 324 This option is useful in network configurations in which 325 multiple bonding hosts are concurrently issuing ARPs to one or 326 more targets beyond a common switch. Should the link between 327 the switch and target fail (but not the switch itself), the 328 probe traffic generated by the multiple bonding instances will 329 fool the standard ARP monitor into considering the links as 330 still up. Use of the arp_validate option can resolve this, as 331 the ARP monitor will only consider ARP requests and replies 332 associated with its own instance of bonding. 333 334 This option was added in bonding version 3.1.0. 335 336 downdelay 337 338 Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before disabling 339 a slave after a link failure has been detected. This option 340 is only valid for the miimon link monitor. The downdelay 341 value should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it 342 will be rounded down to the nearest multiple. The default 343 value is 0. 344 345 fail_over_mac 346 347 Specifies whether active-backup mode should set all slaves to 348 the same MAC address at enslavement (the traditional 349 behavior), or, when enabled, perform special handling of the 350 bond's MAC address in accordance with the selected policy. 351 352 Possible values are: 353 354 none or 0 355 356 This setting disables fail_over_mac, and causes 357 bonding to set all slaves of an active-backup bond to 358 the same MAC address at enslavement time. This is the 359 default. 360 361 active or 1 362 363 The "active" fail_over_mac policy indicates that the 364 MAC address of the bond should always be the MAC 365 address of the currently active slave. The MAC 366 address of the slaves is not changed; instead, the MAC 367 address of the bond changes during a failover. 368 369 This policy is useful for devices that cannot ever 370 alter their MAC address, or for devices that refuse 371 incoming broadcasts with their own source MAC (which 372 interferes with the ARP monitor). 373 374 The down side of this policy is that every device on 375 the network must be updated via gratuitous ARP, 376 vs. just updating a switch or set of switches (which 377 often takes place for any traffic, not just ARP 378 traffic, if the switch snoops incoming traffic to 379 update its tables) for the traditional method. If the 380 gratuitous ARP is lost, communication may be 381 disrupted. 382 383 When this policy is used in conjunction with the mii 384 monitor, devices which assert link up prior to being 385 able to actually transmit and receive are particularly 386 susceptible to loss of the gratuitous ARP, and an 387 appropriate updelay setting may be required. 388 389 follow or 2 390 391 The "follow" fail_over_mac policy causes the MAC 392 address of the bond to be selected normally (normally 393 the MAC address of the first slave added to the bond). 394 However, the second and subsequent slaves are not set 395 to this MAC address while they are in a backup role; a 396 slave is programmed with the bond's MAC address at 397 failover time (and the formerly active slave receives 398 the newly active slave's MAC address). 399 400 This policy is useful for multiport devices that 401 either become confused or incur a performance penalty 402 when multiple ports are programmed with the same MAC 403 address. 404 405 406 The default policy is none, unless the first slave cannot 407 change its MAC address, in which case the active policy is 408 selected by default. 409 410 This option may be modified via sysfs only when no slaves are 411 present in the bond. 412 413 This option was added in bonding version 3.2.0. The "follow" 414 policy was added in bonding version 3.3.0. 415 416 lacp_rate 417 418 Option specifying the rate in which we'll ask our link partner 419 to transmit LACPDU packets in 802.3ad mode. Possible values 420 are: 421 422 slow or 0 423 Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 30 seconds 424 425 fast or 1 426 Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 1 second 427 428 The default is slow. 429 430 max_bonds 431 432 Specifies the number of bonding devices to create for this 433 instance of the bonding driver. E.g., if max_bonds is 3, and 434 the bonding driver is not already loaded, then bond0, bond1 435 and bond2 will be created. The default value is 1. Specifying 436 a value of 0 will load bonding, but will not create any devices. 437 438 miimon 439 440 Specifies the MII link monitoring frequency in milliseconds. 441 This determines how often the link state of each slave is 442 inspected for link failures. A value of zero disables MII 443 link monitoring. A value of 100 is a good starting point. 444 The use_carrier option, below, affects how the link state is 445 determined. See the High Availability section for additional 446 information. The default value is 0. 447 448 min_links 449 450 Specifies the minimum number of links that must be active before 451 asserting carrier. It is similar to the Cisco EtherChannel min-links 452 feature. This allows setting the minimum number of member ports that 453 must be up (link-up state) before marking the bond device as up 454 (carrier on). This is useful for situations where higher level services 455 such as clustering want to ensure a minimum number of low bandwidth 456 links are active before switchover. This option only affect 802.3ad 457 mode. 458 459 The default value is 0. This will cause carrier to be asserted (for 460 802.3ad mode) whenever there is an active aggregator, regardless of the 461 number of available links in that aggregator. Note that, because an 462 aggregator cannot be active without at least one available link, 463 setting this option to 0 or to 1 has the exact same effect. 464 465 mode 466 467 Specifies one of the bonding policies. The default is 468 balance-rr (round robin). Possible values are: 469 470 balance-rr or 0 471 472 Round-robin policy: Transmit packets in sequential 473 order from the first available slave through the 474 last. This mode provides load balancing and fault 475 tolerance. 476 477 active-backup or 1 478 479 Active-backup policy: Only one slave in the bond is 480 active. A different slave becomes active if, and only 481 if, the active slave fails. The bond's MAC address is 482 externally visible on only one port (network adapter) 483 to avoid confusing the switch. 484 485 In bonding version 2.6.2 or later, when a failover 486 occurs in active-backup mode, bonding will issue one 487 or more gratuitous ARPs on the newly active slave. 488 One gratuitous ARP is issued for the bonding master 489 interface and each VLAN interfaces configured above 490 it, provided that the interface has at least one IP 491 address configured. Gratuitous ARPs issued for VLAN 492 interfaces are tagged with the appropriate VLAN id. 493 494 This mode provides fault tolerance. The primary 495 option, documented below, affects the behavior of this 496 mode. 497 498 balance-xor or 2 499 500 XOR policy: Transmit based on the selected transmit 501 hash policy. The default policy is a simple [(source 502 MAC address XOR'd with destination MAC address) modulo 503 slave count]. Alternate transmit policies may be 504 selected via the xmit_hash_policy option, described 505 below. 506 507 This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance. 508 509 broadcast or 3 510 511 Broadcast policy: transmits everything on all slave 512 interfaces. This mode provides fault tolerance. 513 514 802.3ad or 4 515 516 IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation. Creates 517 aggregation groups that share the same speed and 518 duplex settings. Utilizes all slaves in the active 519 aggregator according to the 802.3ad specification. 520 521 Slave selection for outgoing traffic is done according 522 to the transmit hash policy, which may be changed from 523 the default simple XOR policy via the xmit_hash_policy 524 option, documented below. Note that not all transmit 525 policies may be 802.3ad compliant, particularly in 526 regards to the packet mis-ordering requirements of 527 section 43.2.4 of the 802.3ad standard. Differing 528 peer implementations will have varying tolerances for 529 noncompliance. 530 531 Prerequisites: 532 533 1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving 534 the speed and duplex of each slave. 535 536 2. A switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link 537 aggregation. 538 539 Most switches will require some type of configuration 540 to enable 802.3ad mode. 541 542 balance-tlb or 5 543 544 Adaptive transmit load balancing: channel bonding that 545 does not require any special switch support. The 546 outgoing traffic is distributed according to the 547 current load (computed relative to the speed) on each 548 slave. Incoming traffic is received by the current 549 slave. If the receiving slave fails, another slave 550 takes over the MAC address of the failed receiving 551 slave. 552 553 Prerequisite: 554 555 Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving the 556 speed of each slave. 557 558 balance-alb or 6 559 560 Adaptive load balancing: includes balance-tlb plus 561 receive load balancing (rlb) for IPV4 traffic, and 562 does not require any special switch support. The 563 receive load balancing is achieved by ARP negotiation. 564 The bonding driver intercepts the ARP Replies sent by 565 the local system on their way out and overwrites the 566 source hardware address with the unique hardware 567 address of one of the slaves in the bond such that 568 different peers use different hardware addresses for 569 the server. 570 571 Receive traffic from connections created by the server 572 is also balanced. When the local system sends an ARP 573 Request the bonding driver copies and saves the peer's 574 IP information from the ARP packet. When the ARP 575 Reply arrives from the peer, its hardware address is 576 retrieved and the bonding driver initiates an ARP 577 reply to this peer assigning it to one of the slaves 578 in the bond. A problematic outcome of using ARP 579 negotiation for balancing is that each time that an 580 ARP request is broadcast it uses the hardware address 581 of the bond. Hence, peers learn the hardware address 582 of the bond and the balancing of receive traffic 583 collapses to the current slave. This is handled by 584 sending updates (ARP Replies) to all the peers with 585 their individually assigned hardware address such that 586 the traffic is redistributed. Receive traffic is also 587 redistributed when a new slave is added to the bond 588 and when an inactive slave is re-activated. The 589 receive load is distributed sequentially (round robin) 590 among the group of highest speed slaves in the bond. 591 592 When a link is reconnected or a new slave joins the 593 bond the receive traffic is redistributed among all 594 active slaves in the bond by initiating ARP Replies 595 with the selected MAC address to each of the 596 clients. The updelay parameter (detailed below) must 597 be set to a value equal or greater than the switch's 598 forwarding delay so that the ARP Replies sent to the 599 peers will not be blocked by the switch. 600 601 Prerequisites: 602 603 1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving 604 the speed of each slave. 605 606 2. Base driver support for setting the hardware 607 address of a device while it is open. This is 608 required so that there will always be one slave in the 609 team using the bond hardware address (the 610 curr_active_slave) while having a unique hardware 611 address for each slave in the bond. If the 612 curr_active_slave fails its hardware address is 613 swapped with the new curr_active_slave that was 614 chosen. 615 616 num_grat_arp 617 num_unsol_na 618 619 Specify the number of peer notifications (gratuitous ARPs and 620 unsolicited IPv6 Neighbor Advertisements) to be issued after a 621 failover event. As soon as the link is up on the new slave 622 (possibly immediately) a peer notification is sent on the 623 bonding device and each VLAN sub-device. This is repeated at 624 each link monitor interval (arp_interval or miimon, whichever 625 is active) if the number is greater than 1. 626 627 The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1. These options 628 affect only the active-backup mode. These options were added for 629 bonding versions 3.3.0 and 3.4.0 respectively. 630 631 From Linux 3.0 and bonding version 3.7.1, these notifications 632 are generated by the ipv4 and ipv6 code and the numbers of 633 repetitions cannot be set independently. 634 635 primary 636 637 A string (eth0, eth2, etc) specifying which slave is the 638 primary device. The specified device will always be the 639 active slave while it is available. Only when the primary is 640 off-line will alternate devices be used. This is useful when 641 one slave is preferred over another, e.g., when one slave has 642 higher throughput than another. 643 644 The primary option is only valid for active-backup mode. 645 646 primary_reselect 647 648 Specifies the reselection policy for the primary slave. This 649 affects how the primary slave is chosen to become the active slave 650 when failure of the active slave or recovery of the primary slave 651 occurs. This option is designed to prevent flip-flopping between 652 the primary slave and other slaves. Possible values are: 653 654 always or 0 (default) 655 656 The primary slave becomes the active slave whenever it 657 comes back up. 658 659 better or 1 660 661 The primary slave becomes the active slave when it comes 662 back up, if the speed and duplex of the primary slave is 663 better than the speed and duplex of the current active 664 slave. 665 666 failure or 2 667 668 The primary slave becomes the active slave only if the 669 current active slave fails and the primary slave is up. 670 671 The primary_reselect setting is ignored in two cases: 672 673 If no slaves are active, the first slave to recover is 674 made the active slave. 675 676 When initially enslaved, the primary slave is always made 677 the active slave. 678 679 Changing the primary_reselect policy via sysfs will cause an 680 immediate selection of the best active slave according to the new 681 policy. This may or may not result in a change of the active 682 slave, depending upon the circumstances. 683 684 This option was added for bonding version 3.6.0. 685 686 updelay 687 688 Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before enabling a 689 slave after a link recovery has been detected. This option is 690 only valid for the miimon link monitor. The updelay value 691 should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it will be 692 rounded down to the nearest multiple. The default value is 0. 693 694 use_carrier 695 696 Specifies whether or not miimon should use MII or ETHTOOL 697 ioctls vs. netif_carrier_ok() to determine the link 698 status. The MII or ETHTOOL ioctls are less efficient and 699 utilize a deprecated calling sequence within the kernel. The 700 netif_carrier_ok() relies on the device driver to maintain its 701 state with netif_carrier_on/off; at this writing, most, but 702 not all, device drivers support this facility. 703 704 If bonding insists that the link is up when it should not be, 705 it may be that your network device driver does not support 706 netif_carrier_on/off. The default state for netif_carrier is 707 "carrier on," so if a driver does not support netif_carrier, 708 it will appear as if the link is always up. In this case, 709 setting use_carrier to 0 will cause bonding to revert to the 710 MII / ETHTOOL ioctl method to determine the link state. 711 712 A value of 1 enables the use of netif_carrier_ok(), a value of 713 0 will use the deprecated MII / ETHTOOL ioctls. The default 714 value is 1. 715 716 xmit_hash_policy 717 718 Selects the transmit hash policy to use for slave selection in 719 balance-xor and 802.3ad modes. Possible values are: 720 721 layer2 722 723 Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses to generate the 724 hash. The formula is 725 726 (source MAC XOR destination MAC) modulo slave count 727 728 This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular 729 network peer on the same slave. 730 731 This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant. 732 733 layer2+3 734 735 This policy uses a combination of layer2 and layer3 736 protocol information to generate the hash. 737 738 Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses and IP addresses to 739 generate the hash. The formula is 740 741 (((source IP XOR dest IP) AND 0xffff) XOR 742 ( source MAC XOR destination MAC )) 743 modulo slave count 744 745 This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular 746 network peer on the same slave. For non-IP traffic, 747 the formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit 748 hash policy. 749 750 This policy is intended to provide a more balanced 751 distribution of traffic than layer2 alone, especially 752 in environments where a layer3 gateway device is 753 required to reach most destinations. 754 755 This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant. 756 757 layer3+4 758 759 This policy uses upper layer protocol information, 760 when available, to generate the hash. This allows for 761 traffic to a particular network peer to span multiple 762 slaves, although a single connection will not span 763 multiple slaves. 764 765 The formula for unfragmented TCP and UDP packets is 766 767 ((source port XOR dest port) XOR 768 ((source IP XOR dest IP) AND 0xffff) 769 modulo slave count 770 771 For fragmented TCP or UDP packets and all other IP 772 protocol traffic, the source and destination port 773 information is omitted. For non-IP traffic, the 774 formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit hash 775 policy. 776 777 This policy is intended to mimic the behavior of 778 certain switches, notably Cisco switches with PFC2 as 779 well as some Foundry and IBM products. 780 781 This algorithm is not fully 802.3ad compliant. A 782 single TCP or UDP conversation containing both 783 fragmented and unfragmented packets will see packets 784 striped across two interfaces. This may result in out 785 of order delivery. Most traffic types will not meet 786 this criteria, as TCP rarely fragments traffic, and 787 most UDP traffic is not involved in extended 788 conversations. Other implementations of 802.3ad may 789 or may not tolerate this noncompliance. 790 791 The default value is layer2. This option was added in bonding 792 version 2.6.3. In earlier versions of bonding, this parameter 793 does not exist, and the layer2 policy is the only policy. The 794 layer2+3 value was added for bonding version 3.2.2. 795 796 resend_igmp 797 798 Specifies the number of IGMP membership reports to be issued after 799 a failover event. One membership report is issued immediately after 800 the failover, subsequent packets are sent in each 200ms interval. 801 802 The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1. A value of 0 803 prevents the IGMP membership report from being issued in response 804 to the failover event. 805 806 This option is useful for bonding modes balance-rr (0), active-backup 807 (1), balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6), in which a failover can 808 switch the IGMP traffic from one slave to another. Therefore a fresh 809 IGMP report must be issued to cause the switch to forward the incoming 810 IGMP traffic over the newly selected slave. 811 812 This option was added for bonding version 3.7.0. 813 814 3. Configuring Bonding Devices 815 ============================== 816 817 You can configure bonding using either your distro's network 818 initialization scripts, or manually using either ifenslave or the 819 sysfs interface. Distros generally use one of three packages for the 820 network initialization scripts: initscripts, sysconfig or interfaces. 821 Recent versions of these packages have support for bonding, while older 822 versions do not. 823 824 We will first describe the options for configuring bonding for 825 distros using versions of initscripts, sysconfig and interfaces with full 826 or partial support for bonding, then provide information on enabling 827 bonding without support from the network initialization scripts (i.e., 828 older versions of initscripts or sysconfig). 829 830 If you're unsure whether your distro uses sysconfig, 831 initscripts or interfaces, or don't know if it's new enough, have no fear. 832 Determining this is fairly straightforward. 833 834 First, look for a file called interfaces in /etc/network directory. 835 If this file is present in your system, then your system use interfaces. See 836 Configuration with Interfaces Support. 837 838 Else, issue the command: 839 840 $ rpm -qf /sbin/ifup 841 842 It will respond with a line of text starting with either 843 "initscripts" or "sysconfig," followed by some numbers. This is the 844 package that provides your network initialization scripts. 845 846 Next, to determine if your installation supports bonding, 847 issue the command: 848 849 $ grep ifenslave /sbin/ifup 850 851 If this returns any matches, then your initscripts or 852 sysconfig has support for bonding. 853 854 3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support 855 ---------------------------------------- 856 857 This section applies to distros using a version of sysconfig 858 with bonding support, for example, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. 859 860 SuSE SLES 9's networking configuration system does support 861 bonding, however, at this writing, the YaST system configuration 862 front end does not provide any means to work with bonding devices. 863 Bonding devices can be managed by hand, however, as follows. 864 865 First, if they have not already been configured, configure the 866 slave devices. On SLES 9, this is most easily done by running the 867 yast2 sysconfig configuration utility. The goal is for to create an 868 ifcfg-id file for each slave device. The simplest way to accomplish 869 this is to configure the devices for DHCP (this is only to get the 870 file ifcfg-id file created; see below for some issues with DHCP). The 871 name of the configuration file for each device will be of the form: 872 873 ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 874 875 Where the "xx" portion will be replaced with the digits from 876 the device's permanent MAC address. 877 878 Once the set of ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files has been 879 created, it is necessary to edit the configuration files for the slave 880 devices (the MAC addresses correspond to those of the slave devices). 881 Before editing, the file will contain multiple lines, and will look 882 something like this: 883 884 BOOTPROTO='dhcp' 885 STARTMODE='on' 886 USERCTL='no' 887 UNIQUE='XNzu.WeZGOGF+4wE' 888 _nm_name='bus-pci-0001:61:01.0' 889 890 Change the BOOTPROTO and STARTMODE lines to the following: 891 892 BOOTPROTO='none' 893 STARTMODE='off' 894 895 Do not alter the UNIQUE or _nm_name lines. Remove any other 896 lines (USERCTL, etc). 897 898 Once the ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files have been modified, 899 it's time to create the configuration file for the bonding device 900 itself. This file is named ifcfg-bondX, where X is the number of the 901 bonding device to create, starting at 0. The first such file is 902 ifcfg-bond0, the second is ifcfg-bond1, and so on. The sysconfig 903 network configuration system will correctly start multiple instances 904 of bonding. 905 906 The contents of the ifcfg-bondX file is as follows: 907 908 BOOTPROTO="static" 909 BROADCAST="10.0.2.255" 910 IPADDR="10.0.2.10" 911 NETMASK="255.255.0.0" 912 NETWORK="10.0.2.0" 913 REMOTE_IPADDR="" 914 STARTMODE="onboot" 915 BONDING_MASTER="yes" 916 BONDING_MODULE_OPTS="mode=active-backup miimon=100" 917 BONDING_SLAVE0="eth0" 918 BONDING_SLAVE1="bus-pci-0000:06:08.1" 919 920 Replace the sample BROADCAST, IPADDR, NETMASK and NETWORK 921 values with the appropriate values for your network. 922 923 The STARTMODE specifies when the device is brought online. 924 The possible values are: 925 926 onboot: The device is started at boot time. If you're not 927 sure, this is probably what you want. 928 929 manual: The device is started only when ifup is called 930 manually. Bonding devices may be configured this 931 way if you do not wish them to start automatically 932 at boot for some reason. 933 934 hotplug: The device is started by a hotplug event. This is not 935 a valid choice for a bonding device. 936 937 off or ignore: The device configuration is ignored. 938 939 The line BONDING_MASTER='yes' indicates that the device is a 940 bonding master device. The only useful value is "yes." 941 942 The contents of BONDING_MODULE_OPTS are supplied to the 943 instance of the bonding module for this device. Specify the options 944 for the bonding mode, link monitoring, and so on here. Do not include 945 the max_bonds bonding parameter; this will confuse the configuration 946 system if you have multiple bonding devices. 947 948 Finally, supply one BONDING_SLAVEn="slave device" for each 949 slave. where "n" is an increasing value, one for each slave. The 950 "slave device" is either an interface name, e.g., "eth0", or a device 951 specifier for the network device. The interface name is easier to 952 find, but the ethN names are subject to change at boot time if, e.g., 953 a device early in the sequence has failed. The device specifiers 954 (bus-pci-0000:06:08.1 in the example above) specify the physical 955 network device, and will not change unless the device's bus location 956 changes (for example, it is moved from one PCI slot to another). The 957 example above uses one of each type for demonstration purposes; most 958 configurations will choose one or the other for all slave devices. 959 960 When all configuration files have been modified or created, 961 networking must be restarted for the configuration changes to take 962 effect. This can be accomplished via the following: 963 964 # /etc/init.d/network restart 965 966 Note that the network control script (/sbin/ifdown) will 967 remove the bonding module as part of the network shutdown processing, 968 so it is not necessary to remove the module by hand if, e.g., the 969 module parameters have changed. 970 971 Also, at this writing, YaST/YaST2 will not manage bonding 972 devices (they do not show bonding interfaces on its list of network 973 devices). It is necessary to edit the configuration file by hand to 974 change the bonding configuration. 975 976 Additional general options and details of the ifcfg file 977 format can be found in an example ifcfg template file: 978 979 /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template 980 981 Note that the template does not document the various BONDING_ 982 settings described above, but does describe many of the other options. 983 984 3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig 985 ------------------------------- 986 987 Under sysconfig, configuring a device with BOOTPROTO='dhcp' 988 will cause it to query DHCP for its IP address information. At this 989 writing, this does not function for bonding devices; the scripts 990 attempt to obtain the device address from DHCP prior to adding any of 991 the slave devices. Without active slaves, the DHCP requests are not 992 sent to the network. 993 994 3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig 995 ----------------------------------------------- 996 997 The sysconfig network initialization system is capable of 998 handling multiple bonding devices. All that is necessary is for each 999 bonding instance to have an appropriately configured ifcfg-bondX file 1000 (as described above). Do not specify the "max_bonds" parameter to any 1001 instance of bonding, as this will confuse sysconfig. If you require 1002 multiple bonding devices with identical parameters, create multiple 1003 ifcfg-bondX files. 1004 1005 Because the sysconfig scripts supply the bonding module 1006 options in the ifcfg-bondX file, it is not necessary to add them to 1007 the system /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf configuration file. 1008 1009 3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support 1010 ------------------------------------------ 1011 1012 This section applies to distros using a recent version of 1013 initscripts with bonding support, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 1014 version 3 or later, Fedora, etc. On these systems, the network 1015 initialization scripts have knowledge of bonding, and can be configured to 1016 control bonding devices. Note that older versions of the initscripts 1017 package have lower levels of support for bonding; this will be noted where 1018 applicable. 1019 1020 These distros will not automatically load the network adapter 1021 driver unless the ethX device is configured with an IP address. 1022 Because of this constraint, users must manually configure a 1023 network-script file for all physical adapters that will be members of 1024 a bondX link. Network script files are located in the directory: 1025 1026 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts 1027 1028 The file name must be prefixed with "ifcfg-eth" and suffixed 1029 with the adapter's physical adapter number. For example, the script 1030 for eth0 would be named /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0. 1031 Place the following text in the file: 1032 1033 DEVICE=eth0 1034 USERCTL=no 1035 ONBOOT=yes 1036 MASTER=bond0 1037 SLAVE=yes 1038 BOOTPROTO=none 1039 1040 The DEVICE= line will be different for every ethX device and 1041 must correspond with the name of the file, i.e., ifcfg-eth1 must have 1042 a device line of DEVICE=eth1. The setting of the MASTER= line will 1043 also depend on the final bonding interface name chosen for your bond. 1044 As with other network devices, these typically start at 0, and go up 1045 one for each device, i.e., the first bonding instance is bond0, the 1046 second is bond1, and so on. 1047 1048 Next, create a bond network script. The file name for this 1049 script will be /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bondX where X is 1050 the number of the bond. For bond0 the file is named "ifcfg-bond0", 1051 for bond1 it is named "ifcfg-bond1", and so on. Within that file, 1052 place the following text: 1053 1054 DEVICE=bond0 1055 IPADDR=192.168.1.1 1056 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 1057 NETWORK=192.168.1.0 1058 BROADCAST=192.168.1.255 1059 ONBOOT=yes 1060 BOOTPROTO=none 1061 USERCTL=no 1062 1063 Be sure to change the networking specific lines (IPADDR, 1064 NETMASK, NETWORK and BROADCAST) to match your network configuration. 1065 1066 For later versions of initscripts, such as that found with Fedora 1067 7 (or later) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5 (or later), it is possible, 1068 and, indeed, preferable, to specify the bonding options in the ifcfg-bond0 1069 file, e.g. a line of the format: 1070 1071 BONDING_OPTS="mode=active-backup arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.1.254" 1072 1073 will configure the bond with the specified options. The options 1074 specified in BONDING_OPTS are identical to the bonding module parameters 1075 except for the arp_ip_target field when using versions of initscripts older 1076 than and 8.57 (Fedora 8) and 8.45.19 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2). When 1077 using older versions each target should be included as a separate option and 1078 should be preceded by a '+' to indicate it should be added to the list of 1079 queried targets, e.g., 1080 1081 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.1 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.2 1082 1083 is the proper syntax to specify multiple targets. When specifying 1084 options via BONDING_OPTS, it is not necessary to edit /etc/modules.conf or 1085 /etc/modprobe.conf. 1086 1087 For even older versions of initscripts that do not support 1088 BONDING_OPTS, it is necessary to edit /etc/modules.conf (or 1089 /etc/modprobe.conf, depending upon your distro) to load the bonding module 1090 with your desired options when the bond0 interface is brought up. The 1091 following lines in /etc/modules.conf (or modprobe.conf) will load the 1092 bonding module, and select its options: 1093 1094 alias bond0 bonding 1095 options bond0 mode=balance-alb miimon=100 1096 1097 Replace the sample parameters with the appropriate set of 1098 options for your configuration. 1099 1100 Finally run "/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart" as root. This 1101 will restart the networking subsystem and your bond link should be now 1102 up and running. 1103 1104 3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts 1105 --------------------------------- 1106 1107 Recent versions of initscripts (the versions supplied with Fedora 1108 Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, or later versions, are reported to 1109 work) have support for assigning IP information to bonding devices via 1110 DHCP. 1111 1112 To configure bonding for DHCP, configure it as described 1113 above, except replace the line "BOOTPROTO=none" with "BOOTPROTO=dhcp" 1114 and add a line consisting of "TYPE=Bonding". Note that the TYPE value 1115 is case sensitive. 1116 1117 3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts 1118 ------------------------------------------------- 1119 1120 Initscripts packages that are included with Fedora 7 and Red Hat 1121 Enterprise Linux 5 support multiple bonding interfaces by simply 1122 specifying the appropriate BONDING_OPTS= in ifcfg-bondX where X is the 1123 number of the bond. This support requires sysfs support in the kernel, 1124 and a bonding driver of version 3.0.0 or later. Other configurations may 1125 not support this method for specifying multiple bonding interfaces; for 1126 those instances, see the "Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually" section, 1127 below. 1128 1129 3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave 1130 ----------------------------------------------- 1131 1132 This section applies to distros whose network initialization 1133 scripts (the sysconfig or initscripts package) do not have specific 1134 knowledge of bonding. One such distro is SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 1135 version 8. 1136 1137 The general method for these systems is to place the bonding 1138 module parameters into /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf (as 1139 appropriate for the installed distro), then add modprobe and/or 1140 ifenslave commands to the system's global init script. The name of 1141 the global init script differs; for sysconfig, it is 1142 /etc/init.d/boot.local and for initscripts it is /etc/rc.d/rc.local. 1143 1144 For example, if you wanted to make a simple bond of two e100 1145 devices (presumed to be eth0 and eth1), and have it persist across 1146 reboots, edit the appropriate file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or 1147 /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the following: 1148 1149 modprobe bonding mode=balance-alb miimon=100 1150 modprobe e100 1151 ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up 1152 ifenslave bond0 eth0 1153 ifenslave bond0 eth1 1154 1155 Replace the example bonding module parameters and bond0 1156 network configuration (IP address, netmask, etc) with the appropriate 1157 values for your configuration. 1158 1159 Unfortunately, this method will not provide support for the 1160 ifup and ifdown scripts on the bond devices. To reload the bonding 1161 configuration, it is necessary to run the initialization script, e.g., 1162 1163 # /etc/init.d/boot.local 1164 1165 or 1166 1167 # /etc/rc.d/rc.local 1168 1169 It may be desirable in such a case to create a separate script 1170 which only initializes the bonding configuration, then call that 1171 separate script from within boot.local. This allows for bonding to be 1172 enabled without re-running the entire global init script. 1173 1174 To shut down the bonding devices, it is necessary to first 1175 mark the bonding device itself as being down, then remove the 1176 appropriate device driver modules. For our example above, you can do 1177 the following: 1178 1179 # ifconfig bond0 down 1180 # rmmod bonding 1181 # rmmod e100 1182 1183 Again, for convenience, it may be desirable to create a script 1184 with these commands. 1185 1186 1187 3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually 1188 ----------------------------------------- 1189 1190 This section contains information on configuring multiple 1191 bonding devices with differing options for those systems whose network 1192 initialization scripts lack support for configuring multiple bonds. 1193 1194 If you require multiple bonding devices, but all with the same 1195 options, you may wish to use the "max_bonds" module parameter, 1196 documented above. 1197 1198 To create multiple bonding devices with differing options, it is 1199 preferrable to use bonding parameters exported by sysfs, documented in the 1200 section below. 1201 1202 For versions of bonding without sysfs support, the only means to 1203 provide multiple instances of bonding with differing options is to load 1204 the bonding driver multiple times. Note that current versions of the 1205 sysconfig network initialization scripts handle this automatically; if 1206 your distro uses these scripts, no special action is needed. See the 1207 section Configuring Bonding Devices, above, if you're not sure about your 1208 network initialization scripts. 1209 1210 To load multiple instances of the module, it is necessary to 1211 specify a different name for each instance (the module loading system 1212 requires that every loaded module, even multiple instances of the same 1213 module, have a unique name). This is accomplished by supplying multiple 1214 sets of bonding options in /etc/modprobe.conf, for example: 1215 1216 alias bond0 bonding 1217 options bond0 -o bond0 mode=balance-rr miimon=100 1218 1219 alias bond1 bonding 1220 options bond1 -o bond1 mode=balance-alb miimon=50 1221 1222 will load the bonding module two times. The first instance is 1223 named "bond0" and creates the bond0 device in balance-rr mode with an 1224 miimon of 100. The second instance is named "bond1" and creates the 1225 bond1 device in balance-alb mode with an miimon of 50. 1226 1227 In some circumstances (typically with older distributions), 1228 the above does not work, and the second bonding instance never sees 1229 its options. In that case, the second options line can be substituted 1230 as follows: 1231 1232 install bond1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bonding -o bond1 \ 1233 mode=balance-alb miimon=50 1234 1235 This may be repeated any number of times, specifying a new and 1236 unique name in place of bond1 for each subsequent instance. 1237 1238 It has been observed that some Red Hat supplied kernels are unable 1239 to rename modules at load time (the "-o bond1" part). Attempts to pass 1240 that option to modprobe will produce an "Operation not permitted" error. 1241 This has been reported on some Fedora Core kernels, and has been seen on 1242 RHEL 4 as well. On kernels exhibiting this problem, it will be impossible 1243 to configure multiple bonds with differing parameters (as they are older 1244 kernels, and also lack sysfs support). 1245 1246 3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs 1247 ------------------------------------------ 1248 1249 Starting with version 3.0.0, Channel Bonding may be configured 1250 via the sysfs interface. This interface allows dynamic configuration 1251 of all bonds in the system without unloading the module. It also 1252 allows for adding and removing bonds at runtime. Ifenslave is no 1253 longer required, though it is still supported. 1254 1255 Use of the sysfs interface allows you to use multiple bonds 1256 with different configurations without having to reload the module. 1257 It also allows you to use multiple, differently configured bonds when 1258 bonding is compiled into the kernel. 1259 1260 You must have the sysfs filesystem mounted to configure 1261 bonding this way. The examples in this document assume that you 1262 are using the standard mount point for sysfs, e.g. /sys. If your 1263 sysfs filesystem is mounted elsewhere, you will need to adjust the 1264 example paths accordingly. 1265 1266 Creating and Destroying Bonds 1267 ----------------------------- 1268 To add a new bond foo: 1269 # echo +foo > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters 1270 1271 To remove an existing bond bar: 1272 # echo -bar > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters 1273 1274 To show all existing bonds: 1275 # cat /sys/class/net/bonding_masters 1276 1277 NOTE: due to 4K size limitation of sysfs files, this list may be 1278 truncated if you have more than a few hundred bonds. This is unlikely 1279 to occur under normal operating conditions. 1280 1281 Adding and Removing Slaves 1282 -------------------------- 1283 Interfaces may be enslaved to a bond using the file 1284 /sys/class/net/<bond>/bonding/slaves. The semantics for this file 1285 are the same as for the bonding_masters file. 1286 1287 To enslave interface eth0 to bond bond0: 1288 # ifconfig bond0 up 1289 # echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves 1290 1291 To free slave eth0 from bond bond0: 1292 # echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves 1293 1294 When an interface is enslaved to a bond, symlinks between the 1295 two are created in the sysfs filesystem. In this case, you would get 1296 /sys/class/net/bond0/slave_eth0 pointing to /sys/class/net/eth0, and 1297 /sys/class/net/eth0/master pointing to /sys/class/net/bond0. 1298 1299 This means that you can tell quickly whether or not an 1300 interface is enslaved by looking for the master symlink. Thus: 1301 # echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/eth0/master/bonding/slaves 1302 will free eth0 from whatever bond it is enslaved to, regardless of 1303 the name of the bond interface. 1304 1305 Changing a Bond's Configuration 1306 ------------------------------- 1307 Each bond may be configured individually by manipulating the 1308 files located in /sys/class/net/<bond name>/bonding 1309 1310 The names of these files correspond directly with the command- 1311 line parameters described elsewhere in this file, and, with the 1312 exception of arp_ip_target, they accept the same values. To see the 1313 current setting, simply cat the appropriate file. 1314 1315 A few examples will be given here; for specific usage 1316 guidelines for each parameter, see the appropriate section in this 1317 document. 1318 1319 To configure bond0 for balance-alb mode: 1320 # ifconfig bond0 down 1321 # echo 6 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode 1322 - or - 1323 # echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode 1324 NOTE: The bond interface must be down before the mode can be 1325 changed. 1326 1327 To enable MII monitoring on bond0 with a 1 second interval: 1328 # echo 1000 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon 1329 NOTE: If ARP monitoring is enabled, it will disabled when MII 1330 monitoring is enabled, and vice-versa. 1331 1332 To add ARP targets: 1333 # echo +192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target 1334 # echo +192.168.0.101 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target 1335 NOTE: up to 16 target addresses may be specified. 1336 1337 To remove an ARP target: 1338 # echo -192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target 1339 1340 Example Configuration 1341 --------------------- 1342 We begin with the same example that is shown in section 3.3, 1343 executed with sysfs, and without using ifenslave. 1344 1345 To make a simple bond of two e100 devices (presumed to be eth0 1346 and eth1), and have it persist across reboots, edit the appropriate 1347 file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the 1348 following: 1349 1350 modprobe bonding 1351 modprobe e100 1352 echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode 1353 ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up 1354 echo 100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon 1355 echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves 1356 echo +eth1 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves 1357 1358 To add a second bond, with two e1000 interfaces in 1359 active-backup mode, using ARP monitoring, add the following lines to 1360 your init script: 1361 1362 modprobe e1000 1363 echo +bond1 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters 1364 echo active-backup > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/mode 1365 ifconfig bond1 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up 1366 echo +192.168.2.100 /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_ip_target 1367 echo 2000 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_interval 1368 echo +eth2 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves 1369 echo +eth3 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves 1370 1371 3.5 Configuration with Interfaces Support 1372 ----------------------------------------- 1373 1374 This section applies to distros which use /etc/network/interfaces file 1375 to describe network interface configuration, most notably Debian and it's 1376 derivatives. 1377 1378 The ifup and ifdown commands on Debian don't support bonding out of 1379 the box. The ifenslave-2.6 package should be installed to provide bonding 1380 support. Once installed, this package will provide bond-* options to be used 1381 into /etc/network/interfaces. 1382 1383 Note that ifenslave-2.6 package will load the bonding module and use 1384 the ifenslave command when appropriate. 1385 1386 Example Configurations 1387 ---------------------- 1388 1389 In /etc/network/interfaces, the following stanza will configure bond0, in 1390 active-backup mode, with eth0 and eth1 as slaves. 1391 1392 auto bond0 1393 iface bond0 inet dhcp 1394 bond-slaves eth0 eth1 1395 bond-mode active-backup 1396 bond-miimon 100 1397 bond-primary eth0 eth1 1398 1399 If the above configuration doesn't work, you might have a system using 1400 upstart for system startup. This is most notably true for recent 1401 Ubuntu versions. The following stanza in /etc/network/interfaces will 1402 produce the same result on those systems. 1403 1404 auto bond0 1405 iface bond0 inet dhcp 1406 bond-slaves none 1407 bond-mode active-backup 1408 bond-miimon 100 1409 1410 auto eth0 1411 iface eth0 inet manual 1412 bond-master bond0 1413 bond-primary eth0 eth1 1414 1415 auto eth1 1416 iface eth1 inet manual 1417 bond-master bond0 1418 bond-primary eth0 eth1 1419 1420 For a full list of bond-* supported options in /etc/network/interfaces and some 1421 more advanced examples tailored to you particular distros, see the files in 1422 /usr/share/doc/ifenslave-2.6. 1423 1424 3.6 Overriding Configuration for Special Cases 1425 ---------------------------------------------- 1426 1427 When using the bonding driver, the physical port which transmits a frame is 1428 typically selected by the bonding driver, and is not relevant to the user or 1429 system administrator. The output port is simply selected using the policies of 1430 the selected bonding mode. On occasion however, it is helpful to direct certain 1431 classes of traffic to certain physical interfaces on output to implement 1432 slightly more complex policies. For example, to reach a web server over a 1433 bonded interface in which eth0 connects to a private network, while eth1 1434 connects via a public network, it may be desirous to bias the bond to send said 1435 traffic over eth0 first, using eth1 only as a fall back, while all other traffic 1436 can safely be sent over either interface. Such configurations may be achieved 1437 using the traffic control utilities inherent in linux. 1438 1439 By default the bonding driver is multiqueue aware and 16 queues are created 1440 when the driver initializes (see Documentation/networking/multiqueue.txt 1441 for details). If more or less queues are desired the module parameter 1442 tx_queues can be used to change this value. There is no sysfs parameter 1443 available as the allocation is done at module init time. 1444 1445 The output of the file /proc/net/bonding/bondX has changed so the output Queue 1446 ID is now printed for each slave: 1447 1448 Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup) 1449 Primary Slave: None 1450 Currently Active Slave: eth0 1451 MII Status: up 1452 MII Polling Interval (ms): 0 1453 Up Delay (ms): 0 1454 Down Delay (ms): 0 1455 1456 Slave Interface: eth0 1457 MII Status: up 1458 Link Failure Count: 0 1459 Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cb 1460 Slave queue ID: 0 1461 1462 Slave Interface: eth1 1463 MII Status: up 1464 Link Failure Count: 0 1465 Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cc 1466 Slave queue ID: 2 1467 1468 The queue_id for a slave can be set using the command: 1469 1470 # echo "eth1:2" > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/queue_id 1471 1472 Any interface that needs a queue_id set should set it with multiple calls 1473 like the one above until proper priorities are set for all interfaces. On 1474 distributions that allow configuration via initscripts, multiple 'queue_id' 1475 arguments can be added to BONDING_OPTS to set all needed slave queues. 1476 1477 These queue id's can be used in conjunction with the tc utility to configure 1478 a multiqueue qdisc and filters to bias certain traffic to transmit on certain 1479 slave devices. For instance, say we wanted, in the above configuration to 1480 force all traffic bound to 192.168.1.100 to use eth1 in the bond as its output 1481 device. The following commands would accomplish this: 1482 1483 # tc qdisc add dev bond0 handle 1 root multiq 1484 1485 # tc filter add dev bond0 protocol ip parent 1: prio 1 u32 match ip dst \ 1486 192.168.1.100 action skbedit queue_mapping 2 1487 1488 These commands tell the kernel to attach a multiqueue queue discipline to the 1489 bond0 interface and filter traffic enqueued to it, such that packets with a dst 1490 ip of 192.168.1.100 have their output queue mapping value overwritten to 2. 1491 This value is then passed into the driver, causing the normal output path 1492 selection policy to be overridden, selecting instead qid 2, which maps to eth1. 1493 1494 Note that qid values begin at 1. Qid 0 is reserved to initiate to the driver 1495 that normal output policy selection should take place. One benefit to simply 1496 leaving the qid for a slave to 0 is the multiqueue awareness in the bonding 1497 driver that is now present. This awareness allows tc filters to be placed on 1498 slave devices as well as bond devices and the bonding driver will simply act as 1499 a pass-through for selecting output queues on the slave device rather than 1500 output port selection. 1501 1502 This feature first appeared in bonding driver version 3.7.0 and support for 1503 output slave selection was limited to round-robin and active-backup modes. 1504 1505 4 Querying Bonding Configuration 1506 ================================= 1507 1508 4.1 Bonding Configuration 1509 ------------------------- 1510 1511 Each bonding device has a read-only file residing in the 1512 /proc/net/bonding directory. The file contents include information 1513 about the bonding configuration, options and state of each slave. 1514 1515 For example, the contents of /proc/net/bonding/bond0 after the 1516 driver is loaded with parameters of mode=0 and miimon=1000 is 1517 generally as follows: 1518 1519 Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: 2.6.1 (October 29, 2004) 1520 Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin) 1521 Currently Active Slave: eth0 1522 MII Status: up 1523 MII Polling Interval (ms): 1000 1524 Up Delay (ms): 0 1525 Down Delay (ms): 0 1526 1527 Slave Interface: eth1 1528 MII Status: up 1529 Link Failure Count: 1 1530 1531 Slave Interface: eth0 1532 MII Status: up 1533 Link Failure Count: 1 1534 1535 The precise format and contents will change depending upon the 1536 bonding configuration, state, and version of the bonding driver. 1537 1538 4.2 Network configuration 1539 ------------------------- 1540 1541 The network configuration can be inspected using the ifconfig 1542 command. Bonding devices will have the MASTER flag set; Bonding slave 1543 devices will have the SLAVE flag set. The ifconfig output does not 1544 contain information on which slaves are associated with which masters. 1545 1546 In the example below, the bond0 interface is the master 1547 (MASTER) while eth0 and eth1 are slaves (SLAVE). Notice all slaves of 1548 bond0 have the same MAC address (HWaddr) as bond0 for all modes except 1549 TLB and ALB that require a unique MAC address for each slave. 1550 1551 # /sbin/ifconfig 1552 bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4 1553 inet addr:XXX.XXX.XXX.YYY Bcast:XXX.XXX.XXX.255 Mask:255.255.252.0 1554 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 1555 RX packets:7224794 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 1556 TX packets:3286647 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0 1557 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 1558 1559 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4 1560 UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 1561 RX packets:3573025 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 1562 TX packets:1643167 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0 1563 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 1564 Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1080 1565 1566 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4 1567 UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 1568 RX packets:3651769 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 1569 TX packets:1643480 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 1570 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 1571 Interrupt:9 Base address:0x1400 1572 1573 5. Switch Configuration 1574 ======================= 1575 1576 For this section, "switch" refers to whatever system the 1577 bonded devices are directly connected to (i.e., where the other end of 1578 the cable plugs into). This may be an actual dedicated switch device, 1579 or it may be another regular system (e.g., another computer running 1580 Linux), 1581 1582 The active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes do not 1583 require any specific configuration of the switch. 1584 1585 The 802.3ad mode requires that the switch have the appropriate 1586 ports configured as an 802.3ad aggregation. The precise method used 1587 to configure this varies from switch to switch, but, for example, a 1588 Cisco 3550 series switch requires that the appropriate ports first be 1589 grouped together in a single etherchannel instance, then that 1590 etherchannel is set to mode "lacp" to enable 802.3ad (instead of 1591 standard EtherChannel). 1592 1593 The balance-rr, balance-xor and broadcast modes generally 1594 require that the switch have the appropriate ports grouped together. 1595 The nomenclature for such a group differs between switches, it may be 1596 called an "etherchannel" (as in the Cisco example, above), a "trunk 1597 group" or some other similar variation. For these modes, each switch 1598 will also have its own configuration options for the switch's transmit 1599 policy to the bond. Typical choices include XOR of either the MAC or 1600 IP addresses. The transmit policy of the two peers does not need to 1601 match. For these three modes, the bonding mode really selects a 1602 transmit policy for an EtherChannel group; all three will interoperate 1603 with another EtherChannel group. 1604 1605 1606 6. 802.1q VLAN Support 1607 ====================== 1608 1609 It is possible to configure VLAN devices over a bond interface 1610 using the 8021q driver. However, only packets coming from the 8021q 1611 driver and passing through bonding will be tagged by default. Self 1612 generated packets, for example, bonding's learning packets or ARP 1613 packets generated by either ALB mode or the ARP monitor mechanism, are 1614 tagged internally by bonding itself. As a result, bonding must 1615 "learn" the VLAN IDs configured above it, and use those IDs to tag 1616 self generated packets. 1617 1618 For reasons of simplicity, and to support the use of adapters 1619 that can do VLAN hardware acceleration offloading, the bonding 1620 interface declares itself as fully hardware offloading capable, it gets 1621 the add_vid/kill_vid notifications to gather the necessary 1622 information, and it propagates those actions to the slaves. In case 1623 of mixed adapter types, hardware accelerated tagged packets that 1624 should go through an adapter that is not offloading capable are 1625 "un-accelerated" by the bonding driver so the VLAN tag sits in the 1626 regular location. 1627 1628 VLAN interfaces *must* be added on top of a bonding interface 1629 only after enslaving at least one slave. The bonding interface has a 1630 hardware address of 00:00:00:00:00:00 until the first slave is added. 1631 If the VLAN interface is created prior to the first enslavement, it 1632 would pick up the all-zeroes hardware address. Once the first slave 1633 is attached to the bond, the bond device itself will pick up the 1634 slave's hardware address, which is then available for the VLAN device. 1635 1636 Also, be aware that a similar problem can occur if all slaves 1637 are released from a bond that still has one or more VLAN interfaces on 1638 top of it. When a new slave is added, the bonding interface will 1639 obtain its hardware address from the first slave, which might not 1640 match the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces (which was 1641 ultimately copied from an earlier slave). 1642 1643 There are two methods to insure that the VLAN device operates 1644 with the correct hardware address if all slaves are removed from a 1645 bond interface: 1646 1647 1. Remove all VLAN interfaces then recreate them 1648 1649 2. Set the bonding interface's hardware address so that it 1650 matches the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces. 1651 1652 Note that changing a VLAN interface's HW address would set the 1653 underlying device -- i.e. the bonding interface -- to promiscuous 1654 mode, which might not be what you want. 1655 1656 1657 7. Link Monitoring 1658 ================== 1659 1660 The bonding driver at present supports two schemes for 1661 monitoring a slave device's link state: the ARP monitor and the MII 1662 monitor. 1663 1664 At the present time, due to implementation restrictions in the 1665 bonding driver itself, it is not possible to enable both ARP and MII 1666 monitoring simultaneously. 1667 1668 7.1 ARP Monitor Operation 1669 ------------------------- 1670 1671 The ARP monitor operates as its name suggests: it sends ARP 1672 queries to one or more designated peer systems on the network, and 1673 uses the response as an indication that the link is operating. This 1674 gives some assurance that traffic is actually flowing to and from one 1675 or more peers on the local network. 1676 1677 The ARP monitor relies on the device driver itself to verify 1678 that traffic is flowing. In particular, the driver must keep up to 1679 date the last receive time, dev->last_rx, and transmit start time, 1680 dev->trans_start. If these are not updated by the driver, then the 1681 ARP monitor will immediately fail any slaves using that driver, and 1682 those slaves will stay down. If networking monitoring (tcpdump, etc) 1683 shows the ARP requests and replies on the network, then it may be that 1684 your device driver is not updating last_rx and trans_start. 1685 1686 7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets 1687 ------------------------------------ 1688 1689 While ARP monitoring can be done with just one target, it can 1690 be useful in a High Availability setup to have several targets to 1691 monitor. In the case of just one target, the target itself may go 1692 down or have a problem making it unresponsive to ARP requests. Having 1693 an additional target (or several) increases the reliability of the ARP 1694 monitoring. 1695 1696 Multiple ARP targets must be separated by commas as follows: 1697 1698 # example options for ARP monitoring with three targets 1699 alias bond0 bonding 1700 options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.1,192.168.0.3,192.168.0.9 1701 1702 For just a single target the options would resemble: 1703 1704 # example options for ARP monitoring with one target 1705 alias bond0 bonding 1706 options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.100 1707 1708 1709 7.3 MII Monitor Operation 1710 ------------------------- 1711 1712 The MII monitor monitors only the carrier state of the local 1713 network interface. It accomplishes this in one of three ways: by 1714 depending upon the device driver to maintain its carrier state, by 1715 querying the device's MII registers, or by making an ethtool query to 1716 the device. 1717 1718 If the use_carrier module parameter is 1 (the default value), 1719 then the MII monitor will rely on the driver for carrier state 1720 information (via the netif_carrier subsystem). As explained in the 1721 use_carrier parameter information, above, if the MII monitor fails to 1722 detect carrier loss on the device (e.g., when the cable is physically 1723 disconnected), it may be that the driver does not support 1724 netif_carrier. 1725 1726 If use_carrier is 0, then the MII monitor will first query the 1727 device's (via ioctl) MII registers and check the link state. If that 1728 request fails (not just that it returns carrier down), then the MII 1729 monitor will make an ethtool ETHOOL_GLINK request to attempt to obtain 1730 the same information. If both methods fail (i.e., the driver either 1731 does not support or had some error in processing both the MII register 1732 and ethtool requests), then the MII monitor will assume the link is 1733 up. 1734 1735 8. Potential Sources of Trouble 1736 =============================== 1737 1738 8.1 Adventures in Routing 1739 ------------------------- 1740 1741 When bonding is configured, it is important that the slave 1742 devices not have routes that supersede routes of the master (or, 1743 generally, not have routes at all). For example, suppose the bonding 1744 device bond0 has two slaves, eth0 and eth1, and the routing table is 1745 as follows: 1746 1747 Kernel IP routing table 1748 Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface 1749 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 eth0 1750 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 eth1 1751 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 bond0 1752 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 40 0 0 lo 1753 1754 This routing configuration will likely still update the 1755 receive/transmit times in the driver (needed by the ARP monitor), but 1756 may bypass the bonding driver (because outgoing traffic to, in this 1757 case, another host on network 10 would use eth0 or eth1 before bond0). 1758 1759 The ARP monitor (and ARP itself) may become confused by this 1760 configuration, because ARP requests (generated by the ARP monitor) 1761 will be sent on one interface (bond0), but the corresponding reply 1762 will arrive on a different interface (eth0). This reply looks to ARP 1763 as an unsolicited ARP reply (because ARP matches replies on an 1764 interface basis), and is discarded. The MII monitor is not affected 1765 by the state of the routing table. 1766 1767 The solution here is simply to insure that slaves do not have 1768 routes of their own, and if for some reason they must, those routes do 1769 not supersede routes of their master. This should generally be the 1770 case, but unusual configurations or errant manual or automatic static 1771 route additions may cause trouble. 1772 1773 8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming 1774 ---------------------------- 1775 1776 On systems with network configuration scripts that do not 1777 associate physical devices directly with network interface names (so 1778 that the same physical device always has the same "ethX" name), it may 1779 be necessary to add some special logic to either /etc/modules.conf or 1780 /etc/modprobe.conf (depending upon which is installed on the system). 1781 1782 For example, given a modules.conf containing the following: 1783 1784 alias bond0 bonding 1785 options bond0 mode=some-mode miimon=50 1786 alias eth0 tg3 1787 alias eth1 tg3 1788 alias eth2 e1000 1789 alias eth3 e1000 1790 1791 If neither eth0 and eth1 are slaves to bond0, then when the 1792 bond0 interface comes up, the devices may end up reordered. This 1793 happens because bonding is loaded first, then its slave device's 1794 drivers are loaded next. Since no other drivers have been loaded, 1795 when the e1000 driver loads, it will receive eth0 and eth1 for its 1796 devices, but the bonding configuration tries to enslave eth2 and eth3 1797 (which may later be assigned to the tg3 devices). 1798 1799 Adding the following: 1800 1801 add above bonding e1000 tg3 1802 1803 causes modprobe to load e1000 then tg3, in that order, when 1804 bonding is loaded. This command is fully documented in the 1805 modules.conf manual page. 1806 1807 On systems utilizing modprobe.conf (or modprobe.conf.local), 1808 an equivalent problem can occur. In this case, the following can be 1809 added to modprobe.conf (or modprobe.conf.local, as appropriate), as 1810 follows (all on one line; it has been split here for clarity): 1811 1812 install bonding /sbin/modprobe tg3; /sbin/modprobe e1000; 1813 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bonding 1814 1815 This will, when loading the bonding module, rather than 1816 performing the normal action, instead execute the provided command. 1817 This command loads the device drivers in the order needed, then calls 1818 modprobe with --ignore-install to cause the normal action to then take 1819 place. Full documentation on this can be found in the modprobe.conf 1820 and modprobe manual pages. 1821 1822 8.3. Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon 1823 --------------------------------------------------------- 1824 1825 By default, bonding enables the use_carrier option, which 1826 instructs bonding to trust the driver to maintain carrier state. 1827 1828 As discussed in the options section, above, some drivers do 1829 not support the netif_carrier_on/_off link state tracking system. 1830 With use_carrier enabled, bonding will always see these links as up, 1831 regardless of their actual state. 1832 1833 Additionally, other drivers do support netif_carrier, but do 1834 not maintain it in real time, e.g., only polling the link state at 1835 some fixed interval. In this case, miimon will detect failures, but 1836 only after some long period of time has expired. If it appears that 1837 miimon is very slow in detecting link failures, try specifying 1838 use_carrier=0 to see if that improves the failure detection time. If 1839 it does, then it may be that the driver checks the carrier state at a 1840 fixed interval, but does not cache the MII register values (so the 1841 use_carrier=0 method of querying the registers directly works). If 1842 use_carrier=0 does not improve the failover, then the driver may cache 1843 the registers, or the problem may be elsewhere. 1844 1845 Also, remember that miimon only checks for the device's 1846 carrier state. It has no way to determine the state of devices on or 1847 beyond other ports of a switch, or if a switch is refusing to pass 1848 traffic while still maintaining carrier on. 1849 1850 9. SNMP agents 1851 =============== 1852 1853 If running SNMP agents, the bonding driver should be loaded 1854 before any network drivers participating in a bond. This requirement 1855 is due to the interface index (ipAdEntIfIndex) being associated to 1856 the first interface found with a given IP address. That is, there is 1857 only one ipAdEntIfIndex for each IP address. For example, if eth0 and 1858 eth1 are slaves of bond0 and the driver for eth0 is loaded before the 1859 bonding driver, the interface for the IP address will be associated 1860 with the eth0 interface. This configuration is shown below, the IP 1861 address 192.168.1.1 has an interface index of 2 which indexes to eth0 1862 in the ifDescr table (ifDescr.2). 1863 1864 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo 1865 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = eth0 1866 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth1 1867 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth2 1868 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth3 1869 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = bond0 1870 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 5 1871 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2 1872 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 4 1873 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1 1874 1875 This problem is avoided by loading the bonding driver before 1876 any network drivers participating in a bond. Below is an example of 1877 loading the bonding driver first, the IP address 192.168.1.1 is 1878 correctly associated with ifDescr.2. 1879 1880 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo 1881 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = bond0 1882 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth0 1883 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth1 1884 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth2 1885 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = eth3 1886 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 6 1887 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2 1888 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 5 1889 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1 1890 1891 While some distributions may not report the interface name in 1892 ifDescr, the association between the IP address and IfIndex remains 1893 and SNMP functions such as Interface_Scan_Next will report that 1894 association. 1895 1896 10. Promiscuous mode 1897 ==================== 1898 1899 When running network monitoring tools, e.g., tcpdump, it is 1900 common to enable promiscuous mode on the device, so that all traffic 1901 is seen (instead of seeing only traffic destined for the local host). 1902 The bonding driver handles promiscuous mode changes to the bonding 1903 master device (e.g., bond0), and propagates the setting to the slave 1904 devices. 1905 1906 For the balance-rr, balance-xor, broadcast, and 802.3ad modes, 1907 the promiscuous mode setting is propagated to all slaves. 1908 1909 For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, the 1910 promiscuous mode setting is propagated only to the active slave. 1911 1912 For balance-tlb mode, the active slave is the slave currently 1913 receiving inbound traffic. 1914 1915 For balance-alb mode, the active slave is the slave used as a 1916 "primary." This slave is used for mode-specific control traffic, for 1917 sending to peers that are unassigned or if the load is unbalanced. 1918 1919 For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, when 1920 the active slave changes (e.g., due to a link failure), the 1921 promiscuous setting will be propagated to the new active slave. 1922 1923 11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability 1924 ============================================= 1925 1926 High Availability refers to configurations that provide 1927 maximum network availability by having redundant or backup devices, 1928 links or switches between the host and the rest of the world. The 1929 goal is to provide the maximum availability of network connectivity 1930 (i.e., the network always works), even though other configurations 1931 could provide higher throughput. 1932 1933 11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology 1934 -------------------------------------------------- 1935 1936 If two hosts (or a host and a single switch) are directly 1937 connected via multiple physical links, then there is no availability 1938 penalty to optimizing for maximum bandwidth. In this case, there is 1939 only one switch (or peer), so if it fails, there is no alternative 1940 access to fail over to. Additionally, the bonding load balance modes 1941 support link monitoring of their members, so if individual links fail, 1942 the load will be rebalanced across the remaining devices. 1943 1944 See Section 13, "Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput" 1945 for information on configuring bonding with one peer device. 1946 1947 11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology 1948 ---------------------------------------------------- 1949 1950 With multiple switches, the configuration of bonding and the 1951 network changes dramatically. In multiple switch topologies, there is 1952 a trade off between network availability and usable bandwidth. 1953 1954 Below is a sample network, configured to maximize the 1955 availability of the network: 1956 1957 | | 1958 |port3 port3| 1959 +-----+----+ +-----+----+ 1960 | |port2 ISL port2| | 1961 | switch A +--------------------------+ switch B | 1962 | | | | 1963 +-----+----+ +-----++---+ 1964 |port1 port1| 1965 | +-------+ | 1966 +-------------+ host1 +---------------+ 1967 eth0 +-------+ eth1 1968 1969 In this configuration, there is a link between the two 1970 switches (ISL, or inter switch link), and multiple ports connecting to 1971 the outside world ("port3" on each switch). There is no technical 1972 reason that this could not be extended to a third switch. 1973 1974 11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology 1975 ------------------------------------------------------------- 1976 1977 In a topology such as the example above, the active-backup and 1978 broadcast modes are the only useful bonding modes when optimizing for 1979 availability; the other modes require all links to terminate on the 1980 same peer for them to behave rationally. 1981 1982 active-backup: This is generally the preferred mode, particularly if 1983 the switches have an ISL and play together well. If the 1984 network configuration is such that one switch is specifically 1985 a backup switch (e.g., has lower capacity, higher cost, etc), 1986 then the primary option can be used to insure that the 1987 preferred link is always used when it is available. 1988 1989 broadcast: This mode is really a special purpose mode, and is suitable 1990 only for very specific needs. For example, if the two 1991 switches are not connected (no ISL), and the networks beyond 1992 them are totally independent. In this case, if it is 1993 necessary for some specific one-way traffic to reach both 1994 independent networks, then the broadcast mode may be suitable. 1995 1996 11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring Selection for Multiple Switch Topology 1997 ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1998 1999 The choice of link monitoring ultimately depends upon your 2000 switch. If the switch can reliably fail ports in response to other 2001 failures, then either the MII or ARP monitors should work. For 2002 example, in the above example, if the "port3" link fails at the remote 2003 end, the MII monitor has no direct means to detect this. The ARP 2004 monitor could be configured with a target at the remote end of port3, 2005 thus detecting that failure without switch support. 2006 2007 In general, however, in a multiple switch topology, the ARP 2008 monitor can provide a higher level of reliability in detecting end to 2009 end connectivity failures (which may be caused by the failure of any 2010 individual component to pass traffic for any reason). Additionally, 2011 the ARP monitor should be configured with multiple targets (at least 2012 one for each switch in the network). This will insure that, 2013 regardless of which switch is active, the ARP monitor has a suitable 2014 target to query. 2015 2016 Note, also, that of late many switches now support a functionality 2017 generally referred to as "trunk failover." This is a feature of the 2018 switch that causes the link state of a particular switch port to be set 2019 down (or up) when the state of another switch port goes down (or up). 2020 Its purpose is to propagate link failures from logically "exterior" ports 2021 to the logically "interior" ports that bonding is able to monitor via 2022 miimon. Availability and configuration for trunk failover varies by 2023 switch, but this can be a viable alternative to the ARP monitor when using 2024 suitable switches. 2025 2026 12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput 2027 ============================================== 2028 2029 12.1 Maximizing Throughput in a Single Switch Topology 2030 ------------------------------------------------------ 2031 2032 In a single switch configuration, the best method to maximize 2033 throughput depends upon the application and network environment. The 2034 various load balancing modes each have strengths and weaknesses in 2035 different environments, as detailed below. 2036 2037 For this discussion, we will break down the topologies into 2038 two categories. Depending upon the destination of most traffic, we 2039 categorize them into either "gatewayed" or "local" configurations. 2040 2041 In a gatewayed configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily 2042 as a router, and the majority of traffic passes through this router to 2043 other networks. An example would be the following: 2044 2045 2046 +----------+ +----------+ 2047 | |eth0 port1| | to other networks 2048 | Host A +---------------------+ router +-------------------> 2049 | +---------------------+ | Hosts B and C are out 2050 | |eth1 port2| | here somewhere 2051 +----------+ +----------+ 2052 2053 The router may be a dedicated router device, or another host 2054 acting as a gateway. For our discussion, the important point is that 2055 the majority of traffic from Host A will pass through the router to 2056 some other network before reaching its final destination. 2057 2058 In a gatewayed network configuration, although Host A may 2059 communicate with many other systems, all of its traffic will be sent 2060 and received via one other peer on the local network, the router. 2061 2062 Note that the case of two systems connected directly via 2063 multiple physical links is, for purposes of configuring bonding, the 2064 same as a gatewayed configuration. In that case, it happens that all 2065 traffic is destined for the "gateway" itself, not some other network 2066 beyond the gateway. 2067 2068 In a local configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily as 2069 a switch, and the majority of traffic passes through this switch to 2070 reach other stations on the same network. An example would be the 2071 following: 2072 2073 +----------+ +----------+ +--------+ 2074 | |eth0 port1| +-------+ Host B | 2075 | Host A +------------+ switch |port3 +--------+ 2076 | +------------+ | +--------+ 2077 | |eth1 port2| +------------------+ Host C | 2078 +----------+ +----------+port4 +--------+ 2079 2080 2081 Again, the switch may be a dedicated switch device, or another 2082 host acting as a gateway. For our discussion, the important point is 2083 that the majority of traffic from Host A is destined for other hosts 2084 on the same local network (Hosts B and C in the above example). 2085 2086 In summary, in a gatewayed configuration, traffic to and from 2087 the bonded device will be to the same MAC level peer on the network 2088 (the gateway itself, i.e., the router), regardless of its final 2089 destination. In a local configuration, traffic flows directly to and 2090 from the final destinations, thus, each destination (Host B, Host C) 2091 will be addressed directly by their individual MAC addresses. 2092 2093 This distinction between a gatewayed and a local network 2094 configuration is important because many of the load balancing modes 2095 available use the MAC addresses of the local network source and 2096 destination to make load balancing decisions. The behavior of each 2097 mode is described below. 2098 2099 2100 12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology 2101 ----------------------------------------------------------- 2102 2103 This configuration is the easiest to set up and to understand, 2104 although you will have to decide which bonding mode best suits your 2105 needs. The trade offs for each mode are detailed below: 2106 2107 balance-rr: This mode is the only mode that will permit a single 2108 TCP/IP connection to stripe traffic across multiple 2109 interfaces. It is therefore the only mode that will allow a 2110 single TCP/IP stream to utilize more than one interface's 2111 worth of throughput. This comes at a cost, however: the 2112 striping generally results in peer systems receiving packets out 2113 of order, causing TCP/IP's congestion control system to kick 2114 in, often by retransmitting segments. 2115 2116 It is possible to adjust TCP/IP's congestion limits by 2117 altering the net.ipv4.tcp_reordering sysctl parameter. The 2118 usual default value is 3, and the maximum useful value is 127. 2119 For a four interface balance-rr bond, expect that a single 2120 TCP/IP stream will utilize no more than approximately 2.3 2121 interface's worth of throughput, even after adjusting 2122 tcp_reordering. 2123 2124 Note that the fraction of packets that will be delivered out of 2125 order is highly variable, and is unlikely to be zero. The level 2126 of reordering depends upon a variety of factors, including the 2127 networking interfaces, the switch, and the topology of the 2128 configuration. Speaking in general terms, higher speed network 2129 cards produce more reordering (due to factors such as packet 2130 coalescing), and a "many to many" topology will reorder at a 2131 higher rate than a "many slow to one fast" configuration. 2132 2133 Many switches do not support any modes that stripe traffic 2134 (instead choosing a port based upon IP or MAC level addresses); 2135 for those devices, traffic for a particular connection flowing 2136 through the switch to a balance-rr bond will not utilize greater 2137 than one interface's worth of bandwidth. 2138 2139 If you are utilizing protocols other than TCP/IP, UDP for 2140 example, and your application can tolerate out of order 2141 delivery, then this mode can allow for single stream datagram 2142 performance that scales near linearly as interfaces are added 2143 to the bond. 2144 2145 This mode requires the switch to have the appropriate ports 2146 configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking." 2147 2148 active-backup: There is not much advantage in this network topology to 2149 the active-backup mode, as the inactive backup devices are all 2150 connected to the same peer as the primary. In this case, a 2151 load balancing mode (with link monitoring) will provide the 2152 same level of network availability, but with increased 2153 available bandwidth. On the plus side, active-backup mode 2154 does not require any configuration of the switch, so it may 2155 have value if the hardware available does not support any of 2156 the load balance modes. 2157 2158 balance-xor: This mode will limit traffic such that packets destined 2159 for specific peers will always be sent over the same 2160 interface. Since the destination is determined by the MAC 2161 addresses involved, this mode works best in a "local" network 2162 configuration (as described above), with destinations all on 2163 the same local network. This mode is likely to be suboptimal 2164 if all your traffic is passed through a single router (i.e., a 2165 "gatewayed" network configuration, as described above). 2166 2167 As with balance-rr, the switch ports need to be configured for 2168 "etherchannel" or "trunking." 2169 2170 broadcast: Like active-backup, there is not much advantage to this 2171 mode in this type of network topology. 2172 2173 802.3ad: This mode can be a good choice for this type of network 2174 topology. The 802.3ad mode is an IEEE standard, so all peers 2175 that implement 802.3ad should interoperate well. The 802.3ad 2176 protocol includes automatic configuration of the aggregates, 2177 so minimal manual configuration of the switch is needed 2178 (typically only to designate that some set of devices is 2179 available for 802.3ad). The 802.3ad standard also mandates 2180 that frames be delivered in order (within certain limits), so 2181 in general single connections will not see misordering of 2182 packets. The 802.3ad mode does have some drawbacks: the 2183 standard mandates that all devices in the aggregate operate at 2184 the same speed and duplex. Also, as with all bonding load 2185 balance modes other than balance-rr, no single connection will 2186 be able to utilize more than a single interface's worth of 2187 bandwidth. 2188 2189 Additionally, the linux bonding 802.3ad implementation 2190 distributes traffic by peer (using an XOR of MAC addresses), 2191 so in a "gatewayed" configuration, all outgoing traffic will 2192 generally use the same device. Incoming traffic may also end 2193 up on a single device, but that is dependent upon the 2194 balancing policy of the peer's 8023.ad implementation. In a 2195 "local" configuration, traffic will be distributed across the 2196 devices in the bond. 2197 2198 Finally, the 802.3ad mode mandates the use of the MII monitor, 2199 therefore, the ARP monitor is not available in this mode. 2200 2201 balance-tlb: The balance-tlb mode balances outgoing traffic by peer. 2202 Since the balancing is done according to MAC address, in a 2203 "gatewayed" configuration (as described above), this mode will 2204 send all traffic across a single device. However, in a 2205 "local" network configuration, this mode balances multiple 2206 local network peers across devices in a vaguely intelligent 2207 manner (not a simple XOR as in balance-xor or 802.3ad mode), 2208 so that mathematically unlucky MAC addresses (i.e., ones that 2209 XOR to the same value) will not all "bunch up" on a single 2210 interface. 2211 2212 Unlike 802.3ad, interfaces may be of differing speeds, and no 2213 special switch configuration is required. On the down side, 2214 in this mode all incoming traffic arrives over a single 2215 interface, this mode requires certain ethtool support in the 2216 network device driver of the slave interfaces, and the ARP 2217 monitor is not available. 2218 2219 balance-alb: This mode is everything that balance-tlb is, and more. 2220 It has all of the features (and restrictions) of balance-tlb, 2221 and will also balance incoming traffic from local network 2222 peers (as described in the Bonding Module Options section, 2223 above). 2224 2225 The only additional down side to this mode is that the network 2226 device driver must support changing the hardware address while 2227 the device is open. 2228 2229 12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology 2230 ---------------------------------------------------- 2231 2232 The choice of link monitoring may largely depend upon which 2233 mode you choose to use. The more advanced load balancing modes do not 2234 support the use of the ARP monitor, and are thus restricted to using 2235 the MII monitor (which does not provide as high a level of end to end 2236 assurance as the ARP monitor). 2237 2238 12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology 2239 ----------------------------------------------------- 2240 2241 Multiple switches may be utilized to optimize for throughput 2242 when they are configured in parallel as part of an isolated network 2243 between two or more systems, for example: 2244 2245 +-----------+ 2246 | Host A | 2247 +-+---+---+-+ 2248 | | | 2249 +--------+ | +---------+ 2250 | | | 2251 +------+---+ +-----+----+ +-----+----+ 2252 | Switch A | | Switch B | | Switch C | 2253 +------+---+ +-----+----+ +-----+----+ 2254 | | | 2255 +--------+ | +---------+ 2256 | | | 2257 +-+---+---+-+ 2258 | Host B | 2259 +-----------+ 2260 2261 In this configuration, the switches are isolated from one 2262 another. One reason to employ a topology such as this is for an 2263 isolated network with many hosts (a cluster configured for high 2264 performance, for example), using multiple smaller switches can be more 2265 cost effective than a single larger switch, e.g., on a network with 24 2266 hosts, three 24 port switches can be significantly less expensive than 2267 a single 72 port switch. 2268 2269 If access beyond the network is required, an individual host 2270 can be equipped with an additional network device connected to an 2271 external network; this host then additionally acts as a gateway. 2272 2273 12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology 2274 ------------------------------------------------------------- 2275 2276 In actual practice, the bonding mode typically employed in 2277 configurations of this type is balance-rr. Historically, in this 2278 network configuration, the usual caveats about out of order packet 2279 delivery are mitigated by the use of network adapters that do not do 2280 any kind of packet coalescing (via the use of NAPI, or because the 2281 device itself does not generate interrupts until some number of 2282 packets has arrived). When employed in this fashion, the balance-rr 2283 mode allows individual connections between two hosts to effectively 2284 utilize greater than one interface's bandwidth. 2285 2286 12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology 2287 ------------------------------------------------------ 2288 2289 Again, in actual practice, the MII monitor is most often used 2290 in this configuration, as performance is given preference over 2291 availability. The ARP monitor will function in this topology, but its 2292 advantages over the MII monitor are mitigated by the volume of probes 2293 needed as the number of systems involved grows (remember that each 2294 host in the network is configured with bonding). 2295 2296 13. Switch Behavior Issues 2297 ========================== 2298 2299 13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays 2300 ------------------------------------------- 2301 2302 Some switches exhibit undesirable behavior with regard to the 2303 timing of link up and down reporting by the switch. 2304 2305 First, when a link comes up, some switches may indicate that 2306 the link is up (carrier available), but not pass traffic over the 2307 interface for some period of time. This delay is typically due to 2308 some type of autonegotiation or routing protocol, but may also occur 2309 during switch initialization (e.g., during recovery after a switch 2310 failure). If you find this to be a problem, specify an appropriate 2311 value to the updelay bonding module option to delay the use of the 2312 relevant interface(s). 2313 2314 Second, some switches may "bounce" the link state one or more 2315 times while a link is changing state. This occurs most commonly while 2316 the switch is initializing. Again, an appropriate updelay value may 2317 help. 2318 2319 Note that when a bonding interface has no active links, the 2320 driver will immediately reuse the first link that goes up, even if the 2321 updelay parameter has been specified (the updelay is ignored in this 2322 case). If there are slave interfaces waiting for the updelay timeout 2323 to expire, the interface that first went into that state will be 2324 immediately reused. This reduces down time of the network if the 2325 value of updelay has been overestimated, and since this occurs only in 2326 cases with no connectivity, there is no additional penalty for 2327 ignoring the updelay. 2328 2329 In addition to the concerns about switch timings, if your 2330 switches take a long time to go into backup mode, it may be desirable 2331 to not activate a backup interface immediately after a link goes down. 2332 Failover may be delayed via the downdelay bonding module option. 2333 2334 13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets 2335 -------------------------------- 2336 2337 NOTE: Starting with version 3.0.2, the bonding driver has logic to 2338 suppress duplicate packets, which should largely eliminate this problem. 2339 The following description is kept for reference. 2340 2341 It is not uncommon to observe a short burst of duplicated 2342 traffic when the bonding device is first used, or after it has been 2343 idle for some period of time. This is most easily observed by issuing 2344 a "ping" to some other host on the network, and noticing that the 2345 output from ping flags duplicates (typically one per slave). 2346 2347 For example, on a bond in active-backup mode with five slaves 2348 all connected to one switch, the output may appear as follows: 2349 2350 # ping -n 10.0.4.2 2351 PING 10.0.4.2 (10.0.4.2) from 10.0.3.10 : 56(84) bytes of data. 2352 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.7 ms 2353 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!) 2354 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!) 2355 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!) 2356 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!) 2357 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.216 ms 2358 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.267 ms 2359 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.222 ms 2360 2361 This is not due to an error in the bonding driver, rather, it 2362 is a side effect of how many switches update their MAC forwarding 2363 tables. Initially, the switch does not associate the MAC address in 2364 the packet with a particular switch port, and so it may send the 2365 traffic to all ports until its MAC forwarding table is updated. Since 2366 the interfaces attached to the bond may occupy multiple ports on a 2367 single switch, when the switch (temporarily) floods the traffic to all 2368 ports, the bond device receives multiple copies of the same packet 2369 (one per slave device). 2370 2371 The duplicated packet behavior is switch dependent, some 2372 switches exhibit this, and some do not. On switches that display this 2373 behavior, it can be induced by clearing the MAC forwarding table (on 2374 most Cisco switches, the privileged command "clear mac address-table 2375 dynamic" will accomplish this). 2376 2377 14. Hardware Specific Considerations 2378 ==================================== 2379 2380 This section contains additional information for configuring 2381 bonding on specific hardware platforms, or for interfacing bonding 2382 with particular switches or other devices. 2383 2384 14.1 IBM BladeCenter 2385 -------------------- 2386 2387 This applies to the JS20 and similar systems. 2388 2389 On the JS20 blades, the bonding driver supports only 2390 balance-rr, active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes. This is 2391 largely due to the network topology inside the BladeCenter, detailed 2392 below. 2393 2394 JS20 network adapter information 2395 -------------------------------- 2396 2397 All JS20s come with two Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet ports 2398 integrated on the planar (that's "motherboard" in IBM-speak). In the 2399 BladeCenter chassis, the eth0 port of all JS20 blades is hard wired to 2400 I/O Module #1; similarly, all eth1 ports are wired to I/O Module #2. 2401 An add-on Broadcom daughter card can be installed on a JS20 to provide 2402 two more Gigabit Ethernet ports. These ports, eth2 and eth3, are 2403 wired to I/O Modules 3 and 4, respectively. 2404 2405 Each I/O Module may contain either a switch or a passthrough 2406 module (which allows ports to be directly connected to an external 2407 switch). Some bonding modes require a specific BladeCenter internal 2408 network topology in order to function; these are detailed below. 2409 2410 Additional BladeCenter-specific networking information can be 2411 found in two IBM Redbooks (www.ibm.com/redbooks): 2412 2413 "IBM eServer BladeCenter Networking Options" 2414 "IBM eServer BladeCenter Layer 2-7 Network Switching" 2415 2416 BladeCenter networking configuration 2417 ------------------------------------ 2418 2419 Because a BladeCenter can be configured in a very large number 2420 of ways, this discussion will be confined to describing basic 2421 configurations. 2422 2423 Normally, Ethernet Switch Modules (ESMs) are used in I/O 2424 modules 1 and 2. In this configuration, the eth0 and eth1 ports of a 2425 JS20 will be connected to different internal switches (in the 2426 respective I/O modules). 2427 2428 A passthrough module (OPM or CPM, optical or copper, 2429 passthrough module) connects the I/O module directly to an external 2430 switch. By using PMs in I/O module #1 and #2, the eth0 and eth1 2431 interfaces of a JS20 can be redirected to the outside world and 2432 connected to a common external switch. 2433 2434 Depending upon the mix of ESMs and PMs, the network will 2435 appear to bonding as either a single switch topology (all PMs) or as a 2436 multiple switch topology (one or more ESMs, zero or more PMs). It is 2437 also possible to connect ESMs together, resulting in a configuration 2438 much like the example in "High Availability in a Multiple Switch 2439 Topology," above. 2440 2441 Requirements for specific modes 2442 ------------------------------- 2443 2444 The balance-rr mode requires the use of passthrough modules 2445 for devices in the bond, all connected to an common external switch. 2446 That switch must be configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking" on the 2447 appropriate ports, as is usual for balance-rr. 2448 2449 The balance-alb and balance-tlb modes will function with 2450 either switch modules or passthrough modules (or a mix). The only 2451 specific requirement for these modes is that all network interfaces 2452 must be able to reach all destinations for traffic sent over the 2453 bonding device (i.e., the network must converge at some point outside 2454 the BladeCenter). 2455 2456 The active-backup mode has no additional requirements. 2457 2458 Link monitoring issues 2459 ---------------------- 2460 2461 When an Ethernet Switch Module is in place, only the ARP 2462 monitor will reliably detect link loss to an external switch. This is 2463 nothing unusual, but examination of the BladeCenter cabinet would 2464 suggest that the "external" network ports are the ethernet ports for 2465 the system, when it fact there is a switch between these "external" 2466 ports and the devices on the JS20 system itself. The MII monitor is 2467 only able to detect link failures between the ESM and the JS20 system. 2468 2469 When a passthrough module is in place, the MII monitor does 2470 detect failures to the "external" port, which is then directly 2471 connected to the JS20 system. 2472 2473 Other concerns 2474 -------------- 2475 2476 The Serial Over LAN (SoL) link is established over the primary 2477 ethernet (eth0) only, therefore, any loss of link to eth0 will result 2478 in losing your SoL connection. It will not fail over with other 2479 network traffic, as the SoL system is beyond the control of the 2480 bonding driver. 2481 2482 It may be desirable to disable spanning tree on the switch 2483 (either the internal Ethernet Switch Module, or an external switch) to 2484 avoid fail-over delay issues when using bonding. 2485 2486 2487 15. Frequently Asked Questions 2488 ============================== 2489 2490 1. Is it SMP safe? 2491 2492 Yes. The old 2.0.xx channel bonding patch was not SMP safe. 2493 The new driver was designed to be SMP safe from the start. 2494 2495 2. What type of cards will work with it? 2496 2497 Any Ethernet type cards (you can even mix cards - a Intel 2498 EtherExpress PRO/100 and a 3com 3c905b, for example). For most modes, 2499 devices need not be of the same speed. 2500 2501 Starting with version 3.2.1, bonding also supports Infiniband 2502 slaves in active-backup mode. 2503 2504 3. How many bonding devices can I have? 2505 2506 There is no limit. 2507 2508 4. How many slaves can a bonding device have? 2509 2510 This is limited only by the number of network interfaces Linux 2511 supports and/or the number of network cards you can place in your 2512 system. 2513 2514 5. What happens when a slave link dies? 2515 2516 If link monitoring is enabled, then the failing device will be 2517 disabled. The active-backup mode will fail over to a backup link, and 2518 other modes will ignore the failed link. The link will continue to be 2519 monitored, and should it recover, it will rejoin the bond (in whatever 2520 manner is appropriate for the mode). See the sections on High 2521 Availability and the documentation for each mode for additional 2522 information. 2523 2524 Link monitoring can be enabled via either the miimon or 2525 arp_interval parameters (described in the module parameters section, 2526 above). In general, miimon monitors the carrier state as sensed by 2527 the underlying network device, and the arp monitor (arp_interval) 2528 monitors connectivity to another host on the local network. 2529 2530 If no link monitoring is configured, the bonding driver will 2531 be unable to detect link failures, and will assume that all links are 2532 always available. This will likely result in lost packets, and a 2533 resulting degradation of performance. The precise performance loss 2534 depends upon the bonding mode and network configuration. 2535 2536 6. Can bonding be used for High Availability? 2537 2538 Yes. See the section on High Availability for details. 2539 2540 7. Which switches/systems does it work with? 2541 2542 The full answer to this depends upon the desired mode. 2543 2544 In the basic balance modes (balance-rr and balance-xor), it 2545 works with any system that supports etherchannel (also called 2546 trunking). Most managed switches currently available have such 2547 support, and many unmanaged switches as well. 2548 2549 The advanced balance modes (balance-tlb and balance-alb) do 2550 not have special switch requirements, but do need device drivers that 2551 support specific features (described in the appropriate section under 2552 module parameters, above). 2553 2554 In 802.3ad mode, it works with systems that support IEEE 2555 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation. Most managed and many unmanaged 2556 switches currently available support 802.3ad. 2557 2558 The active-backup mode should work with any Layer-II switch. 2559 2560 8. Where does a bonding device get its MAC address from? 2561 2562 When using slave devices that have fixed MAC addresses, or when 2563 the fail_over_mac option is enabled, the bonding device's MAC address is 2564 the MAC address of the active slave. 2565 2566 For other configurations, if not explicitly configured (with 2567 ifconfig or ip link), the MAC address of the bonding device is taken from 2568 its first slave device. This MAC address is then passed to all following 2569 slaves and remains persistent (even if the first slave is removed) until 2570 the bonding device is brought down or reconfigured. 2571 2572 If you wish to change the MAC address, you can set it with 2573 ifconfig or ip link: 2574 2575 # ifconfig bond0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55 2576 2577 # ip link set bond0 address 66:77:88:99:aa:bb 2578 2579 The MAC address can be also changed by bringing down/up the 2580 device and then changing its slaves (or their order): 2581 2582 # ifconfig bond0 down ; modprobe -r bonding 2583 # ifconfig bond0 .... up 2584 # ifenslave bond0 eth... 2585 2586 This method will automatically take the address from the next 2587 slave that is added. 2588 2589 To restore your slaves' MAC addresses, you need to detach them 2590 from the bond (`ifenslave -d bond0 eth0'). The bonding driver will 2591 then restore the MAC addresses that the slaves had before they were 2592 enslaved. 2593 2594 16. Resources and Links 2595 ======================= 2596 2597 The latest version of the bonding driver can be found in the latest 2598 version of the linux kernel, found on http://kernel.org 2599 2600 The latest version of this document can be found in the latest kernel 2601 source (named Documentation/networking/bonding.txt). 2602 2603 Discussions regarding the usage of the bonding driver take place on the 2604 bonding-devel mailing list, hosted at sourceforge.net. If you have questions or 2605 problems, post them to the list. The list address is: 2606 2607 bonding-devel@lists.sourceforge.net 2608 2609 The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can 2610 be found at: 2611 2612 https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bonding-devel 2613 2614 Discussions regarding the developpement of the bonding driver take place 2615 on the main Linux network mailing list, hosted at vger.kernel.org. The list 2616 address is: 2617 2618 netdev@vger.kernel.org 2619 2620 The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can 2621 be found at: 2622 2623 http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#netdev 2624 2625 Donald Becker's Ethernet Drivers and diag programs may be found at : 2626 - http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.scyld.com/network/ 2627 2628 You will also find a lot of information regarding Ethernet, NWay, MII, 2629 etc. at www.scyld.com. 2630 2631 -- END --