cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

NIC Bonding Query

John_Chisari
Level 6
Partner Accredited

Hi,

I currently have 2 x 5020 Appliances all ready to go and the question of bonding the NIC's came up. So having a bit of a read and decided to bond the 2 x 10GBe's and the other will bond the 4 x 1Gb's with balance-alb mode mainly for performance reasons.

If the NIC's are connected to different switches but on the same layer 2 vlan will I also get redudancy - I am assuming so, but need to confirm.

Thanks

John

3 REPLIES 3

Mark_Solutions
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

The original Getting Started Guide says

 "Caution: Do not bond either of the two 10-GB ports with the 1-GB port . This action can affect performance adversely"

But this no longer appears in the current Getting Started Guide but does now appear in the Admin Guide (Page 14)

It also says:

"At a later time, you can configure the appliance to use the 1-GB network or the 10-GB network for storage pool administration"

Which implies that if you are using the 10G NICS then dont bond them with the 1G NICS

Hope this helps

KiranP
Level 2
Employee Accredited

Most this should work (bonded NIC's are connected to different switch but are on same vlan), but appliances are not qualified with such configuration.

More details on bonding can be found at http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/bonding.txt

 

-Kiran

Chad_Wansing2
Level 5
Employee Accredited Certified

I just got done doing a POC of a similar situation.  As long as everything is on the same layer 2 network (Cisco Nexus switches tied together or something) you're fine.  Just be very careful that your bonding modes on the appliances match what's set on the switch port.  I fyou're using Cisco, you'll want to set the appliances for 802.3ad to use the LACP standard.  if you don't set the switch ports to ANYTHING, balance-alb is a good choice, but remember that balance-alb essentially does MAC spoofing to route the packets, so if you're only using ARP to resolve everything in your switch structure things could go a little crazy.  Definitely test thoroughly prior to implementation.

 

-Chad