Linux Ethernet Bonding Driver HOWTO 英文原版

Linux Ethernet Bonding Driver HOWTO

Latest update: 12 November 2007

Initial release : Thomas Davis <tadavis at lbl.gov>

Corrections, HA extensions : 2000/10/03-15 :

  - Willy Tarreau <willy at meta-x.org>

  - Constantine Gavrilov <const-g at xpert.com>

  - Chad N. Tindel <ctindel at ieee dot org>

  - Janice Girouard <girouard at us dot ibm dot com>

  - Jay Vosburgh <fubar at us dot ibm dot com>

Reorganized and updated Feb 2005 by Jay Vosburgh

Added Sysfs information: 2006/04/24

  - Mitch Williams <mitch.a.williams at intel.com>

Introduction

============

The Linux bonding driver provides a method for aggregating

multiple network interfaces into a single logical "bonded" interface.

The behavior of the bonded interfaces depends upon the mode; generally

speaking, modes provide either hot standby or load balancing services.

Additionally, link integrity monitoring may be performed.

The bonding driver originally came from Donald Becker's

beowulf patches for kernel 2.0. It has changed quite a bit since, and

the original tools from extreme-linux and beowulf sites will not work

with this version of the driver.

For new versions of the driver, updated userspace tools, and

who to ask for help, please follow the links at the end of this file.

Table of Contents

=================

1. Bonding Driver Installation

2. Bonding Driver Options

3. Configuring Bonding Devices

3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support

3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig

3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig

3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support

3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts

3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts

3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave

3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually

3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs

4. Querying Bonding Configuration

4.1 Bonding Configuration

4.2 Network Configuration

5. Switch Configuration

6. 802.1q VLAN Support

7. Link Monitoring

7.1 ARP Monitor Operation

7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets

7.3 MII Monitor Operation

8. Potential Trouble Sources

8.1 Adventures in Routing

8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming

8.3 Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon

9. SNMP agents

10. Promiscuous mode

11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability

11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology

11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology

11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology

11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology

12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput

12.1 Maximum Throughput in a Single Switch Topology

12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology

12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology

12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology

12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology

12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology

13. Switch Behavior Issues

13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays

13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets

14. Hardware Specific Considerations

14.1 IBM BladeCenter

15. Frequently Asked Questions

16. Resources and Links

1. Bonding Driver Installation

==============================

Most popular distro kernels ship with the bonding driver

already available as a module and the ifenslave user level control

program installed and ready for use. If your distro does not, or you

have need to compile bonding from source (e.g., configuring and

installing a mainline kernel from kernel.org), you'll need to perform

the following steps:

1.1 Configure and build the kernel with bonding

-----------------------------------------------

The current version of the bonding driver is available in the

drivers/net/bonding subdirectory of the most recent kernel source

(which is available on http://kernel.org).  Most users "rolling their

own" will want to use the most recent kernel from kernel.org.

Configure kernel with "make menuconfig" (or "make xconfig" or

"make config"), then select "Bonding driver support" in the "Network

device support" section.  It is recommended that you configure the

driver as module since it is currently the only way to pass parameters

to the driver or configure more than one bonding device.

Build and install the new kernel and modules, then continue

below to install ifenslave.

1.2 Install ifenslave Control Utility

-------------------------------------

The ifenslave user level control program is included in the

kernel source tree, in the file Documentation/networking/ifenslave.c.

It is generally recommended that you use the ifenslave that

corresponds to the kernel that you are using (either from the same

source tree or supplied with the distro), however, ifenslave

executables from older kernels should function (but features newer

than the ifenslave release are not supported).  Running an ifenslave

that is newer than the kernel is not supported, and may or may not

work.

To install ifenslave, do the following:

# gcc -Wall -O -I/usr/src/linux/include ifenslave.c -o ifenslave

# cp ifenslave /sbin/ifenslave

If your kernel source is not in "/usr/src/linux," then replace

"/usr/src/linux/include" in the above with the location of your kernel

source include directory.

You may wish to back up any existing /sbin/ifenslave, or, for

testing or informal use, tag the ifenslave to the kernel version

(e.g., name the ifenslave executable /sbin/ifenslave-2.6.10).

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you omit the "-I" or specify an incorrect directory, you

may end up with an ifenslave that is incompatible with the kernel

you're trying to build it for.  Some distros (e.g., Red Hat from 7.1

onwards) do not have /usr/include/linux symbolically linked to the

default kernel source include directory.

SECOND IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you plan to configure bonding using sysfs, you do not need

to use ifenslave.

2. Bonding Driver Options

=========================

Options for the bonding driver are supplied as parameters to the

bonding module at load time, or are specified via sysfs.

Module options may be given as command line arguments to the

insmod or modprobe command, but are usually specified in either the

/etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf configuration file, or in a

distro-specific configuration file (some of which are detailed in the next

section).

Details on bonding support for sysfs is provided in the

"Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs" section, below.

The available bonding driver parameters are listed below. If a

parameter is not specified the default value is used.  When initially

configuring a bond, it is recommended "tail -f /var/log/messages" be

run in a separate window to watch for bonding driver error messages.

It is critical that either the miimon or arp_interval and

arp_ip_target parameters be specified, otherwise serious network

degradation will occur during link failures.  Very few devices do not

support at least miimon, so there is really no reason not to use it.

Options with textual values will accept either the text name

or, for backwards compatibility, the option value.  E.g.,

"mode=802.3ad" and "mode=4" set the same mode.

The parameters are as follows:

arp_interval

Specifies the ARP link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.

The ARP monitor works by periodically checking the slave

devices to determine whether they have sent or received

traffic recently (the precise criteria depends upon the

bonding mode, and the state of the slave).  Regular traffic is

generated via ARP probes issued for the addresses specified by

the arp_ip_target option.

This behavior can be modified by the arp_validate option,

below.

If ARP monitoring is used in an etherchannel compatible mode

(modes 0 and 2), the switch should be configured in a mode

that evenly distributes packets across all links. If the

switch is configured to distribute the packets in an XOR

fashion, all replies from the ARP targets will be received on

the same link which could cause the other team members to

fail.  ARP monitoring should not be used in conjunction with

miimon.  A value of 0 disables ARP monitoring.  The default

value is 0.

arp_ip_target

Specifies the IP addresses to use as ARP monitoring peers when

arp_interval is > 0.  These are the targets of the ARP request

sent to determine the health of the link to the targets.

Specify these values in ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd format.  Multiple IP

addresses must be separated by a comma.  At least one IP

address must be given for ARP monitoring to function.  The

maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16.  The

default value is no IP addresses.

arp_validate

Specifies whether or not ARP probes and replies should be

validated in the active-backup mode.  This causes the ARP

monitor to examine the incoming ARP requests and replies, and

only consider a slave to be up if it is receiving the

appropriate ARP traffic.

Possible values are:

none or 0

No validation is performed.  This is the default.

active or 1

Validation is performed only for the active slave.

backup or 2

Validation is performed only for backup slaves.

all or 3

Validation is performed for all slaves.

For the active slave, the validation checks ARP replies to

confirm that they were generated by an arp_ip_target.  Since

backup slaves do not typically receive these replies, the

validation performed for backup slaves is on the ARP request

sent out via the active slave.  It is possible that some

switch or network configurations may result in situations

wherein the backup slaves do not receive the ARP requests; in

such a situation, validation of backup slaves must be

disabled.

This option is useful in network configurations in which

multiple bonding hosts are concurrently issuing ARPs to one or

more targets beyond a common switch.  Should the link between

the switch and target fail (but not the switch itself), the

probe traffic generated by the multiple bonding instances will

fool the standard ARP monitor into considering the links as

still up.  Use of the arp_validate option can resolve this, as

the ARP monitor will only consider ARP requests and replies

associated with its own instance of bonding.

This option was added in bonding version 3.1.0.

downdelay

Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before disabling

a slave after a link failure has been detected.  This option

is only valid for the miimon link monitor.  The downdelay

value should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it

will be rounded down to the nearest multiple.  The default

value is 0.

fail_over_mac

Specifies whether active-backup mode should set all slaves to

the same MAC address (the traditional behavior), or, when

enabled, change the bond's MAC address when changing the

active interface (i.e., fail over the MAC address itself).

Fail over MAC is useful for devices that cannot ever alter

their MAC address, or for devices that refuse incoming

broadcasts with their own source MAC (which interferes with

the ARP monitor).

The down side of fail over MAC is that every device on the

network must be updated via gratuitous ARP, vs. just updating

a switch or set of switches (which often takes place for any

traffic, not just ARP traffic, if the switch snoops incoming

traffic to update its tables) for the traditional method.  If

the gratuitous ARP is lost, communication may be disrupted.

When fail over MAC is used in conjuction with the mii monitor,

devices which assert link up prior to being able to actually

transmit and receive are particularly susecptible to loss of

the gratuitous ARP, and an appropriate updelay setting may be

required.

A value of 0 disables fail over MAC, and is the default.  A

value of 1 enables fail over MAC.  This option is enabled

automatically if the first slave added cannot change its MAC

address.  This option may be modified via sysfs only when no

slaves are present in the bond.

This option was added in bonding version 3.2.0.

lacp_rate

Option specifying the rate in which we'll ask our link partner

to transmit LACPDU packets in 802.3ad mode.  Possible values

are:

slow or 0

Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 30 seconds

fast or 1

Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 1 second

The default is slow.

max_bonds

Specifies the number of bonding devices to create for this

instance of the bonding driver.  E.g., if max_bonds is 3, and

the bonding driver is not already loaded, then bond0, bond1

and bond2 will be created.  The default value is 1.

miimon

Specifies the MII link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.

This determines how often the link state of each slave is

inspected for link failures.  A value of zero disables MII

link monitoring.  A value of 100 is a good starting point.

The use_carrier option, below, affects how the link state is

determined.  See the High Availability section for additional

information.  The default value is 0.

mode

Specifies one of the bonding policies. The default is

balance-rr (round robin).  Possible values are:

balance-rr or 0

Round-robin policy: Transmit packets in sequential

order from the first available slave through the

last.  This mode provides load balancing and fault

tolerance.

active-backup or 1

Active-backup policy: Only one slave in the bond is

active.  A different slave becomes active if, and only

if, the active slave fails.  The bond's MAC address is

externally visible on only one port (network adapter)

to avoid confusing the switch.

In bonding version 2.6.2 or later, when a failover

occurs in active-backup mode, bonding will issue one

or more gratuitous ARPs on the newly active slave.

One gratuitous ARP is issued for the bonding master

interface and each VLAN interfaces configured above

it, provided that the interface has at least one IP

address configured.  Gratuitous ARPs issued for VLAN

interfaces are tagged with the appropriate VLAN id.

This mode provides fault tolerance.  The primary

option, documented below, affects the behavior of this

mode.

balance-xor or 2

XOR policy: Transmit based on the selected transmit

hash policy.  The default policy is a simple [(source

MAC address XOR'd with destination MAC address) modulo

slave count].  Alternate transmit policies may be

selected via the xmit_hash_policy option, described

below.

This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance.

broadcast or 3

Broadcast policy: transmits everything on all slave

interfaces.  This mode provides fault tolerance.

802.3ad or 4

IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation.  Creates

aggregation groups that share the same speed and

duplex settings.  Utilizes all slaves in the active

aggregator according to the 802.3ad specification.

Slave selection for outgoing traffic is done according

to the transmit hash policy, which may be changed from

the default simple XOR policy via the xmit_hash_policy

option, documented below.  Note that not all transmit

policies may be 802.3ad compliant, particularly in

regards to the packet mis-ordering requirements of

section 43.2.4 of the 802.3ad standard.  Differing

peer implementations will have varying tolerances for

noncompliance.

Prerequisites:

1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving

the speed and duplex of each slave.

2. A switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link

aggregation.

Most switches will require some type of configuration

to enable 802.3ad mode.

balance-tlb or 5

Adaptive transmit load balancing: channel bonding that

does not require any special switch support.  The

outgoing traffic is distributed according to the

current load (computed relative to the speed) on each

slave.  Incoming traffic is received by the current

slave.  If the receiving slave fails, another slave

takes over the MAC address of the failed receiving

slave.

Prerequisite:

Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving the

speed of each slave.

balance-alb or 6

Adaptive load balancing: includes balance-tlb plus

receive load balancing (rlb) for IPV4 traffic, and

does not require any special switch support.  The

receive load balancing is achieved by ARP negotiation.

The bonding driver intercepts the ARP Replies sent by

the local system on their way out and overwrites the

source hardware address with the unique hardware

address of one of the slaves in the bond such that

different peers use different hardware addresses for

the server.

Receive traffic from connections created by the server

is also balanced.  When the local system sends an ARP

Request the bonding driver copies and saves the peer's

IP information from the ARP packet.  When the ARP

Reply arrives from the peer, its hardware address is

retrieved and the bonding driver initiates an ARP

reply to this peer assigning it to one of the slaves

in the bond.  A problematic outcome of using ARP

negotiation for balancing is that each time that an

ARP request is broadcast it uses the hardware address

of the bond.  Hence, peers learn the hardware address

of the bond and the balancing of receive traffic

collapses to the current slave.  This is handled by

sending updates (ARP Replies) to all the peers with

their individually assigned hardware address such that

the traffic is redistributed.  Receive traffic is also

redistributed when a new slave is added to the bond

and when an inactive slave is re-activated.  The

receive load is distributed sequentially (round robin)

among the group of highest speed slaves in the bond.

When a link is reconnected or a new slave joins the

bond the receive traffic is redistributed among all

active slaves in the bond by initiating ARP Replies

with the selected MAC address to each of the

clients. The updelay parameter (detailed below) must

be set to a value equal or greater than the switch's

forwarding delay so that the ARP Replies sent to the

peers will not be blocked by the switch.

Prerequisites:

1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving

the speed of each slave.

2. Base driver support for setting the hardware

address of a device while it is open.  This is

required so that there will always be one slave in the

team using the bond hardware address (the

curr_active_slave) while having a unique hardware

address for each slave in the bond.  If the

curr_active_slave fails its hardware address is

swapped with the new curr_active_slave that was

chosen.

primary

A string (eth0, eth2, etc) specifying which slave is the

primary device.  The specified device will always be the

active slave while it is available.  Only when the primary is

off-line will alternate devices be used.  This is useful when

one slave is preferred over another, e.g., when one slave has

higher throughput than another.

The primary option is only valid for active-backup mode.

updelay

Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before enabling a

slave after a link recovery has been detected.  This option is

only valid for the miimon link monitor.  The updelay value

should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it will be

rounded down to the nearest multiple.  The default value is 0.

use_carrier

Specifies whether or not miimon should use MII or ETHTOOL

ioctls vs. netif_carrier_ok() to determine the link

status. The MII or ETHTOOL ioctls are less efficient and

utilize a deprecated calling sequence within the kernel.  The

netif_carrier_ok() relies on the device driver to maintain its

state with netif_carrier_on/off; at this writing, most, but

not all, device drivers support this facility.

If bonding insists that the link is up when it should not be,

it may be that your network device driver does not support

netif_carrier_on/off.  The default state for netif_carrier is

"carrier on," so if a driver does not support netif_carrier,

it will appear as if the link is always up.  In this case,

setting use_carrier to 0 will cause bonding to revert to the

MII / ETHTOOL ioctl method to determine the link state.

A value of 1 enables the use of netif_carrier_ok(), a value of

0 will use the deprecated MII / ETHTOOL ioctls.  The default

value is 1.

xmit_hash_policy

Selects the transmit hash policy to use for slave selection in

balance-xor and 802.3ad modes.  Possible values are:

layer2

Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses to generate the

hash.  The formula is

(source MAC XOR destination MAC) modulo slave count

This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular

network peer on the same slave.

This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant.

layer2+3

This policy uses a combination of layer2 and layer3

protocol information to generate the hash.

Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses and IP addresses to

generate the hash.  The formula is

(((source IP XOR dest IP) AND 0xffff) XOR

( source MAC XOR destination MAC ))

modulo slave count

This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular

network peer on the same slave.  For non-IP traffic,

the formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit

hash policy.

This policy is intended to provide a more balanced

distribution of traffic than layer2 alone, especially

in environments where a layer3 gateway device is

required to reach most destinations.

This algorithm is 802.3ad complient.

layer3+4

This policy uses upper layer protocol information,

when available, to generate the hash.  This allows for

traffic to a particular network peer to span multiple

slaves, although a single connection will not span

multiple slaves.

The formula for unfragmented TCP and UDP packets is

((source port XOR dest port) XOR

((source IP XOR dest IP) AND 0xffff)

modulo slave count

For fragmented TCP or UDP packets and all other IP

protocol traffic, the source and destination port

information is omitted.  For non-IP traffic, the

formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit hash

policy.

This policy is intended to mimic the behavior of

certain switches, notably Cisco switches with PFC2 as

well as some Foundry and IBM products.

This algorithm is not fully 802.3ad compliant.  A

single TCP or UDP conversation containing both

fragmented and unfragmented packets will see packets

striped across two interfaces.  This may result in out

of order delivery.  Most traffic types will not meet

this criteria, as TCP rarely fragments traffic, and

most UDP traffic is not involved in extended

conversations.  Other implementations of 802.3ad may

or may not tolerate this noncompliance.

The default value is layer2.  This option was added in bonding

version 2.6.3.  In earlier versions of bonding, this parameter

does not exist, and the layer2 policy is the only policy.  The

layer2+3 value was added for bonding version 3.2.2.

3. Configuring Bonding Devices

==============================

You can configure bonding using either your distro's network

initialization scripts, or manually using either ifenslave or the

sysfs interface.  Distros generally use one of two packages for the

network initialization scripts: initscripts or sysconfig.  Recent

versions of these packages have support for bonding, while older

versions do not.

We will first describe the options for configuring bonding for

distros using versions of initscripts and sysconfig with full or

partial support for bonding, then provide information on enabling

bonding without support from the network initialization scripts (i.e.,

older versions of initscripts or sysconfig).

If you're unsure whether your distro uses sysconfig or

initscripts, or don't know if it's new enough, have no fear.

Determining this is fairly straightforward.

First, issue the command:

$ rpm -qf /sbin/ifup

It will respond with a line of text starting with either

"initscripts" or "sysconfig," followed by some numbers.  This is the

package that provides your network initialization scripts.

Next, to determine if your installation supports bonding,

issue the command:

$ grep ifenslave /sbin/ifup

If this returns any matches, then your initscripts or

sysconfig has support for bonding.

3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support

----------------------------------------

This section applies to distros using a version of sysconfig

with bonding support, for example, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.

SuSE SLES 9's networking configuration system does support

bonding, however, at this writing, the YaST system configuration

front end does not provide any means to work with bonding devices.

Bonding devices can be managed by hand, however, as follows.

First, if they have not already been configured, configure the

slave devices.  On SLES 9, this is most easily done by running the

yast2 sysconfig configuration utility.  The goal is for to create an

ifcfg-id file for each slave device.  The simplest way to accomplish

this is to configure the devices for DHCP (this is only to get the

file ifcfg-id file created; see below for some issues with DHCP).  The

name of the configuration file for each device will be of the form:

ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

Where the "xx" portion will be replaced with the digits from

the device's permanent MAC address.

Once the set of ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files has been

created, it is necessary to edit the configuration files for the slave

devices (the MAC addresses correspond to those of the slave devices).

Before editing, the file will contain multiple lines, and will look

something like this:

BOOTPROTO='dhcp'

STARTMODE='on'

USERCTL='no'

UNIQUE='XNzu.WeZGOGF+4wE'

_nm_name='bus-pci-0001:61:01.0'

Change the BOOTPROTO and STARTMODE lines to the following:

BOOTPROTO='none'

STARTMODE='off'

Do not alter the UNIQUE or _nm_name lines.  Remove any other

lines (USERCTL, etc).

Once the ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files have been modified,

it's time to create the configuration file for the bonding device

itself.  This file is named ifcfg-bondX, where X is the number of the

bonding device to create, starting at 0.  The first such file is

ifcfg-bond0, the second is ifcfg-bond1, and so on.  The sysconfig

network configuration system will correctly start multiple instances

of bonding.

The contents of the ifcfg-bondX file is as follows:

BOOTPROTO="static"

BROADCAST="10.0.2.255"

IPADDR="10.0.2.10"

NETMASK="255.255.0.0"

NETWORK="10.0.2.0"

REMOTE_IPADDR=""

STARTMODE="onboot"

BONDING_MASTER="yes"

BONDING_MODULE_OPTS="mode=active-backup miimon=100"

BONDING_SLAVE0="eth0"

BONDING_SLAVE1="bus-pci-0000:06:08.1"

Replace the sample BROADCAST, IPADDR, NETMASK and NETWORK

values with the appropriate values for your network.

The STARTMODE specifies when the device is brought online.

The possible values are:

onboot: The device is started at boot time.  If you're not

sure, this is probably what you want.

manual: The device is started only when ifup is called

manually.  Bonding devices may be configured this

way if you do not wish them to start automatically

at boot for some reason.

hotplug: The device is started by a hotplug event.  This is not

a valid choice for a bonding device.

off or ignore: The device configuration is ignored.

The line BONDING_MASTER='yes' indicates that the device is a

bonding master device.  The only useful value is "yes."

The contents of BONDING_MODULE_OPTS are supplied to the

instance of the bonding module for this device.  Specify the options

for the bonding mode, link monitoring, and so on here.  Do not include

the max_bonds bonding parameter; this will confuse the configuration

system if you have multiple bonding devices.

Finally, supply one BONDING_SLAVEn="slave device" for each

slave.  where "n" is an increasing value, one for each slave.  The

"slave device" is either an interface name, e.g., "eth0", or a device

specifier for the network device.  The interface name is easier to

find, but the ethN names are subject to change at boot time if, e.g.,

a device early in the sequence has failed.  The device specifiers

(bus-pci-0000:06:08.1 in the example above) specify the physical

network device, and will not change unless the device's bus location

changes (for example, it is moved from one PCI slot to another).  The

example above uses one of each type for demonstration purposes; most

configurations will choose one or the other for all slave devices.

When all configuration files have been modified or created,

networking must be restarted for the configuration changes to take

effect.  This can be accomplished via the following:

# /etc/init.d/network restart

Note that the network control script (/sbin/ifdown) will

remove the bonding module as part of the network shutdown processing,

so it is not necessary to remove the module by hand if, e.g., the

module parameters have changed.

Also, at this writing, YaST/YaST2 will not manage bonding

devices (they do not show bonding interfaces on its list of network

devices).  It is necessary to edit the configuration file by hand to

change the bonding configuration.

Additional general options and details of the ifcfg file

format can be found in an example ifcfg template file:

/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template

Note that the template does not document the various BONDING_

settings described above, but does describe many of the other options.

3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig

-------------------------------

Under sysconfig, configuring a device with BOOTPROTO='dhcp'

will cause it to query DHCP for its IP address information.  At this

writing, this does not function for bonding devices; the scripts

attempt to obtain the device address from DHCP prior to adding any of

the slave devices.  Without active slaves, the DHCP requests are not

sent to the network.

3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig

-----------------------------------------------

The sysconfig network initialization system is capable of

handling multiple bonding devices.  All that is necessary is for each

bonding instance to have an appropriately configured ifcfg-bondX file

(as described above).  Do not specify the "max_bonds" parameter to any

instance of bonding, as this will confuse sysconfig.  If you require

multiple bonding devices with identical parameters, create multiple

ifcfg-bondX files.

Because the sysconfig scripts supply the bonding module

options in the ifcfg-bondX file, it is not necessary to add them to

the system /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf configuration file.

3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support

------------------------------------------

This section applies to distros using a recent version of

initscripts with bonding support, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux

version 3 or later, Fedora, etc.  On these systems, the network

initialization scripts have knowledge of bonding, and can be configured to

control bonding devices.  Note that older versions of the initscripts

package have lower levels of support for bonding; this will be noted where

applicable.

These distros will not automatically load the network adapter

driver unless the ethX device is configured with an IP address.

Because of this constraint, users must manually configure a

network-script file for all physical adapters that will be members of

a bondX link.  Network script files are located in the directory:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

The file name must be prefixed with "ifcfg-eth" and suffixed

with the adapter's physical adapter number.  For example, the script

for eth0 would be named /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.

Place the following text in the file:

DEVICE=eth0

USERCTL=no

ONBOOT=yes

MASTER=bond0

SLAVE=yes

BOOTPROTO=none

The DEVICE= line will be different for every ethX device and

must correspond with the name of the file, i.e., ifcfg-eth1 must have

a device line of DEVICE=eth1.  The setting of the MASTER= line will

also depend on the final bonding interface name chosen for your bond.

As with other network devices, these typically start at 0, and go up

one for each device, i.e., the first bonding instance is bond0, the

second is bond1, and so on.

Next, create a bond network script.  The file name for this

script will be /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bondX where X is

the number of the bond.  For bond0 the file is named "ifcfg-bond0",

for bond1 it is named "ifcfg-bond1", and so on.  Within that file,

place the following text:

DEVICE=bond0

IPADDR=192.168.1.1

NETMASK=255.255.255.0

NETWORK=192.168.1.0

BROADCAST=192.168.1.255

ONBOOT=yes

BOOTPROTO=none

USERCTL=no

Be sure to change the networking specific lines (IPADDR,

NETMASK, NETWORK and BROADCAST) to match your network configuration.

For later versions of initscripts, such as that found with Fedora

7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5 (or later), it is possible, and,

indeed, preferable, to specify the bonding options in the ifcfg-bond0

file, e.g. a line of the format:

BONDING_OPTS="mode=active-backup arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.254"

will configure the bond with the specified options.  The options

specified in BONDING_OPTS are identical to the bonding module parameters

except for the arp_ip_target field.  Each target should be included as a

separate option and should be preceded by a '+' to indicate it should be

added to the list of queried targets, e.g.,

arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.1 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.2

is the proper syntax to specify multiple targets.  When specifying

options via BONDING_OPTS, it is not necessary to edit /etc/modules.conf or

/etc/modprobe.conf.

For older versions of initscripts that do not support

BONDING_OPTS, it is necessary to edit /etc/modules.conf (or

/etc/modprobe.conf, depending upon your distro) to load the bonding module

with your desired options when the bond0 interface is brought up.  The

following lines in /etc/modules.conf (or modprobe.conf) will load the

bonding module, and select its options:

alias bond0 bonding

options bond0 mode=balance-alb miimon=100

Replace the sample parameters with the appropriate set of

options for your configuration.

Finally run "/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart" as root.  This

will restart the networking subsystem and your bond link should be now

up and running.

3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts

---------------------------------

Recent versions of initscripts (the versions supplied with Fedora

Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, or later versions, are reported to

work) have support for assigning IP information to bonding devices via

DHCP.

To configure bonding for DHCP, configure it as described

above, except replace the line "BOOTPROTO=none" with "BOOTPROTO=dhcp"

and add a line consisting of "TYPE=Bonding".  Note that the TYPE value

is case sensitive.

3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts

-------------------------------------------------

Initscripts packages that are included with Fedora 7 and Red Hat

Enterprise Linux 5 support multiple bonding interfaces by simply

specifying the appropriate BONDING_OPTS= in ifcfg-bondX where X is the

number of the bond.  This support requires sysfs support in the kernel,

and a bonding driver of version 3.0.0 or later.  Other configurations may

not support this method for specifying multiple bonding interfaces; for

those instances, see the "Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually" section,

below.

3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave

-----------------------------------------------

This section applies to distros whose network initialization

scripts (the sysconfig or initscripts package) do not have specific

knowledge of bonding.  One such distro is SuSE Linux Enterprise Server

version 8.

The general method for these systems is to place the bonding

module parameters into /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf (as

appropriate for the installed distro), then add modprobe and/or

ifenslave commands to the system's global init script.  The name of

the global init script differs; for sysconfig, it is

/etc/init.d/boot.local and for initscripts it is /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

For example, if you wanted to make a simple bond of two e100

devices (presumed to be eth0 and eth1), and have it persist across

reboots, edit the appropriate file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or

/etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the following:

modprobe bonding mode=balance-alb miimon=100

modprobe e100

ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

ifenslave bond0 eth0

ifenslave bond0 eth1

Replace the example bonding module parameters and bond0

network configuration (IP address, netmask, etc) with the appropriate

values for your configuration.

Unfortunately, this method will not provide support for the

ifup and ifdown scripts on the bond devices.  To reload the bonding

configuration, it is necessary to run the initialization script, e.g.,

# /etc/init.d/boot.local

or

# /etc/rc.d/rc.local

It may be desirable in such a case to create a separate script

which only initializes the bonding configuration, then call that

separate script from within boot.local.  This allows for bonding to be

enabled without re-running the entire global init script.

To shut down the bonding devices, it is necessary to first

mark the bonding device itself as being down, then remove the

appropriate device driver modules.  For our example above, you can do

the following:

# ifconfig bond0 down

# rmmod bonding

# rmmod e100

Again, for convenience, it may be desirable to create a script

with these commands.

3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually

-----------------------------------------

This section contains information on configuring multiple

bonding devices with differing options for those systems whose network

initialization scripts lack support for configuring multiple bonds.

If you require multiple bonding devices, but all with the same

options, you may wish to use the "max_bonds" module parameter,

documented above.

To create multiple bonding devices with differing options, it is

preferrable to use bonding parameters exported by sysfs, documented in the

section below.

For versions of bonding without sysfs support, the only means to

provide multiple instances of bonding with differing options is to load

the bonding driver multiple times.  Note that current versions of the

sysconfig network initialization scripts handle this automatically; if

your distro uses these scripts, no special action is needed.  See the

section Configuring Bonding Devices, above, if you're not sure about your

network initialization scripts.

To load multiple instances of the module, it is necessary to

specify a different name for each instance (the module loading system

requires that every loaded module, even multiple instances of the same

module, have a unique name).  This is accomplished by supplying multiple

sets of bonding options in /etc/modprobe.conf, for example:

alias bond0 bonding

options bond0 -o bond0 mode=balance-rr miimon=100

alias bond1 bonding

options bond1 -o bond1 mode=balance-alb miimon=50

will load the bonding module two times.  The first instance is

named "bond0" and creates the bond0 device in balance-rr mode with an

miimon of 100.  The second instance is named "bond1" and creates the

bond1 device in balance-alb mode with an miimon of 50.

In some circumstances (typically with older distributions),

the above does not work, and the second bonding instance never sees

its options.  In that case, the second options line can be substituted

as follows:

install bond1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bonding -o bond1 \

mode=balance-alb miimon=50

This may be repeated any number of times, specifying a new and

unique name in place of bond1 for each subsequent instance.

It has been observed that some Red Hat supplied kernels are unable

to rename modules at load time (the "-o bond1" part).  Attempts to pass

that option to modprobe will produce an "Operation not permitted" error.

This has been reported on some Fedora Core kernels, and has been seen on

RHEL 4 as well.  On kernels exhibiting this problem, it will be impossible

to configure multiple bonds with differing parameters (as they are older

kernels, and also lack sysfs support).

3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs

------------------------------------------

Starting with version 3.0.0, Channel Bonding may be configured

via the sysfs interface.  This interface allows dynamic configuration

of all bonds in the system without unloading the module.  It also

allows for adding and removing bonds at runtime.  Ifenslave is no

longer required, though it is still supported.

Use of the sysfs interface allows you to use multiple bonds

with different configurations without having to reload the module.

It also allows you to use multiple, differently configured bonds when

bonding is compiled into the kernel.

You must have the sysfs filesystem mounted to configure

bonding this way.  The examples in this document assume that you

are using the standard mount point for sysfs, e.g. /sys.  If your

sysfs filesystem is mounted elsewhere, you will need to adjust the

example paths accordingly.

Creating and Destroying Bonds

-----------------------------

To add a new bond foo:

# echo +foo > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters

To remove an existing bond bar:

# echo -bar > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters

To show all existing bonds:

# cat /sys/class/net/bonding_masters

NOTE: due to 4K size limitation of sysfs files, this list may be

truncated if you have more than a few hundred bonds.  This is unlikely

to occur under normal operating conditions.

Adding and Removing Slaves

--------------------------

Interfaces may be enslaved to a bond using the file

/sys/class/net/<bond>/bonding/slaves.  The semantics for this file

are the same as for the bonding_masters file.

To enslave interface eth0 to bond bond0:

# ifconfig bond0 up

# echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves

To free slave eth0 from bond bond0:

# echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves

When an interface is enslaved to a bond, symlinks between the

two are created in the sysfs filesystem.  In this case, you would get

/sys/class/net/bond0/slave_eth0 pointing to /sys/class/net/eth0, and

/sys/class/net/eth0/master pointing to /sys/class/net/bond0.

This means that you can tell quickly whether or not an

interface is enslaved by looking for the master symlink.  Thus:

# echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/eth0/master/bonding/slaves

will free eth0 from whatever bond it is enslaved to, regardless of

the name of the bond interface.

Changing a Bond's Configuration

-------------------------------

Each bond may be configured individually by manipulating the

files located in /sys/class/net/<bond name>/bonding

The names of these files correspond directly with the command-

line parameters described elsewhere in this file, and, with the

exception of arp_ip_target, they accept the same values.  To see the

current setting, simply cat the appropriate file.

A few examples will be given here; for specific usage

guidelines for each parameter, see the appropriate section in this

document.

To configure bond0 for balance-alb mode:

# ifconfig bond0 down

# echo 6 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode

 - or -

# echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode

NOTE: The bond interface must be down before the mode can be

changed.

To enable MII monitoring on bond0 with a 1 second interval:

# echo 1000 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon

NOTE: If ARP monitoring is enabled, it will disabled when MII

monitoring is enabled, and vice-versa.

To add ARP targets:

# echo +192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target

# echo +192.168.0.101 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target

NOTE:  up to 10 target addresses may be specified.

To remove an ARP target:

# echo -192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target

Example Configuration

---------------------

We begin with the same example that is shown in section 3.3,

executed with sysfs, and without using ifenslave.

To make a simple bond of two e100 devices (presumed to be eth0

and eth1), and have it persist across reboots, edit the appropriate

file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the

following:

modprobe bonding

modprobe e100

echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode

ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

echo 100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon

echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves

echo +eth1 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves

To add a second bond, with two e1000 interfaces in

active-backup mode, using ARP monitoring, add the following lines to

your init script:

modprobe e1000

echo +bond1 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters

echo active-backup > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/mode

ifconfig bond1 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

echo +192.168.2.100 /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_ip_target

echo 2000 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_interval

echo +eth2 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves

echo +eth3 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves

4. Querying Bonding Configuration 

=================================

4.1 Bonding Configuration

-------------------------

Each bonding device has a read-only file residing in the

/proc/net/bonding directory.  The file contents include information

about the bonding configuration, options and state of each slave.

For example, the contents of /proc/net/bonding/bond0 after the

driver is loaded with parameters of mode=0 and miimon=1000 is

generally as follows:

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: 2.6.1 (October 29, 2004)

        Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)

        Currently Active Slave: eth0

        MII Status: up

        MII Polling Interval (ms): 1000

        Up Delay (ms): 0

        Down Delay (ms): 0

        Slave Interface: eth1

        MII Status: up

        Link Failure Count: 1

        Slave Interface: eth0

        MII Status: up

        Link Failure Count: 1

The precise format and contents will change depending upon the

bonding configuration, state, and version of the bonding driver.

4.2 Network configuration

-------------------------

The network configuration can be inspected using the ifconfig

command.  Bonding devices will have the MASTER flag set; Bonding slave

devices will have the SLAVE flag set.  The ifconfig output does not

contain information on which slaves are associated with which masters.

In the example below, the bond0 interface is the master

(MASTER) while eth0 and eth1 are slaves (SLAVE). Notice all slaves of

bond0 have the same MAC address (HWaddr) as bond0 for all modes except

TLB and ALB that require a unique MAC address for each slave.

# /sbin/ifconfig

bond0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4

          inet addr:XXX.XXX.XXX.YYY  Bcast:XXX.XXX.XXX.255  Mask:255.255.252.0

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:7224794 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:3286647 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:3573025 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:1643167 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100

          Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1080

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:3651769 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:1643480 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100

          Interrupt:9 Base address:0x1400

5. Switch Configuration

=======================

For this section, "switch" refers to whatever system the

bonded devices are directly connected to (i.e., where the other end of

the cable plugs into).  This may be an actual dedicated switch device,

or it may be another regular system (e.g., another computer running

Linux),

The active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes do not

require any specific configuration of the switch.

The 802.3ad mode requires that the switch have the appropriate

ports configured as an 802.3ad aggregation.  The precise method used

to configure this varies from switch to switch, but, for example, a

Cisco 3550 series switch requires that the appropriate ports first be

grouped together in a single etherchannel instance, then that

etherchannel is set to mode "lacp" to enable 802.3ad (instead of

standard EtherChannel).

The balance-rr, balance-xor and broadcast modes generally

require that the switch have the appropriate ports grouped together.

The nomenclature for such a group differs between switches, it may be

called an "etherchannel" (as in the Cisco example, above), a "trunk

group" or some other similar variation.  For these modes, each switch

will also have its own configuration options for the switch's transmit

policy to the bond.  Typical choices include XOR of either the MAC or

IP addresses.  The transmit policy of the two peers does not need to

match.  For these three modes, the bonding mode really selects a

transmit policy for an EtherChannel group; all three will interoperate

with another EtherChannel group.

6. 802.1q VLAN Support

======================

It is possible to configure VLAN devices over a bond interface

using the 8021q driver.  However, only packets coming from the 8021q

driver and passing through bonding will be tagged by default.  Self

generated packets, for example, bonding's learning packets or ARP

packets generated by either ALB mode or the ARP monitor mechanism, are

tagged internally by bonding itself.  As a result, bonding must

"learn" the VLAN IDs configured above it, and use those IDs to tag

self generated packets.

For reasons of simplicity, and to support the use of adapters

that can do VLAN hardware acceleration offloading, the bonding

interface declares itself as fully hardware offloading capable, it gets

the add_vid/kill_vid notifications to gather the necessary

information, and it propagates those actions to the slaves.  In case

of mixed adapter types, hardware accelerated tagged packets that

should go through an adapter that is not offloading capable are

"un-accelerated" by the bonding driver so the VLAN tag sits in the

regular location.

VLAN interfaces *must* be added on top of a bonding interface

only after enslaving at least one slave.  The bonding interface has a

hardware address of 00:00:00:00:00:00 until the first slave is added.

If the VLAN interface is created prior to the first enslavement, it

would pick up the all-zeroes hardware address.  Once the first slave

is attached to the bond, the bond device itself will pick up the

slave's hardware address, which is then available for the VLAN device.

Also, be aware that a similar problem can occur if all slaves

are released from a bond that still has one or more VLAN interfaces on

top of it.  When a new slave is added, the bonding interface will

obtain its hardware address from the first slave, which might not

match the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces (which was

ultimately copied from an earlier slave).

There are two methods to insure that the VLAN device operates

with the correct hardware address if all slaves are removed from a

bond interface:

1. Remove all VLAN interfaces then recreate them

2. Set the bonding interface's hardware address so that it

matches the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces.

Note that changing a VLAN interface's HW address would set the

underlying device -- i.e. the bonding interface -- to promiscuous

mode, which might not be what you want.

7. Link Monitoring

==================

The bonding driver at present supports two schemes for

monitoring a slave device's link state: the ARP monitor and the MII

monitor.

At the present time, due to implementation restrictions in the

bonding driver itself, it is not possible to enable both ARP and MII

monitoring simultaneously.

7.1 ARP Monitor Operation

-------------------------

The ARP monitor operates as its name suggests: it sends ARP

queries to one or more designated peer systems on the network, and

uses the response as an indication that the link is operating.  This

gives some assurance that traffic is actually flowing to and from one

or more peers on the local network.

The ARP monitor relies on the device driver itself to verify

that traffic is flowing.  In particular, the driver must keep up to

date the last receive time, dev->last_rx, and transmit start time,

dev->trans_start.  If these are not updated by the driver, then the

ARP monitor will immediately fail any slaves using that driver, and

those slaves will stay down.  If networking monitoring (tcpdump, etc)

shows the ARP requests and replies on the network, then it may be that

your device driver is not updating last_rx and trans_start.

7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets

------------------------------------

While ARP monitoring can be done with just one target, it can

be useful in a High Availability setup to have several targets to

monitor.  In the case of just one target, the target itself may go

down or have a problem making it unresponsive to ARP requests.  Having

an additional target (or several) increases the reliability of the ARP

monitoring.

Multiple ARP targets must be separated by commas as follows:

# example options for ARP monitoring with three targets

alias bond0 bonding

options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.1,192.168.0.3,192.168.0.9

For just a single target the options would resemble:

# example options for ARP monitoring with one target

alias bond0 bonding

options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.100

7.3 MII Monitor Operation

-------------------------

The MII monitor monitors only the carrier state of the local

network interface.  It accomplishes this in one of three ways: by

depending upon the device driver to maintain its carrier state, by

querying the device's MII registers, or by making an ethtool query to

the device.

If the use_carrier module parameter is 1 (the default value),

then the MII monitor will rely on the driver for carrier state

information (via the netif_carrier subsystem).  As explained in the

use_carrier parameter information, above, if the MII monitor fails to

detect carrier loss on the device (e.g., when the cable is physically

disconnected), it may be that the driver does not support

netif_carrier.

If use_carrier is 0, then the MII monitor will first query the

device's (via ioctl) MII registers and check the link state.  If that

request fails (not just that it returns carrier down), then the MII

monitor will make an ethtool ETHOOL_GLINK request to attempt to obtain

the same information.  If both methods fail (i.e., the driver either

does not support or had some error in processing both the MII register

and ethtool requests), then the MII monitor will assume the link is

up.

8. Potential Sources of Trouble

===============================

8.1 Adventures in Routing

-------------------------

When bonding is configured, it is important that the slave

devices not have routes that supersede routes of the master (or,

generally, not have routes at all).  For example, suppose the bonding

device bond0 has two slaves, eth0 and eth1, and the routing table is

as follows:

Kernel IP routing table

Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface

10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 eth0

10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 eth1

10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U        40 0          0 bond0

127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U        40 0          0 lo

This routing configuration will likely still update the

receive/transmit times in the driver (needed by the ARP monitor), but

may bypass the bonding driver (because outgoing traffic to, in this

case, another host on network 10 would use eth0 or eth1 before bond0).

The ARP monitor (and ARP itself) may become confused by this

configuration, because ARP requests (generated by the ARP monitor)

will be sent on one interface (bond0), but the corresponding reply

will arrive on a different interface (eth0).  This reply looks to ARP

as an unsolicited ARP reply (because ARP matches replies on an

interface basis), and is discarded.  The MII monitor is not affected

by the state of the routing table.

The solution here is simply to insure that slaves do not have

routes of their own, and if for some reason they must, those routes do

not supersede routes of their master.  This should generally be the

case, but unusual configurations or errant manual or automatic static

route additions may cause trouble.

8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming

----------------------------

On systems with network configuration scripts that do not

associate physical devices directly with network interface names (so

that the same physical device always has the same "ethX" name), it may

be necessary to add some special logic to either /etc/modules.conf or

/etc/modprobe.conf (depending upon which is installed on the system).

For example, given a modules.conf containing the following:

alias bond0 bonding

options bond0 mode=some-mode miimon=50

alias eth0 tg3

alias eth1 tg3

alias eth2 e1000

alias eth3 e1000

If neither eth0 and eth1 are slaves to bond0, then when the

bond0 interface comes up, the devices may end up reordered.  This

happens because bonding is loaded first, then its slave device's

drivers are loaded next.  Since no other drivers have been loaded,

when the e1000 driver loads, it will receive eth0 and eth1 for its

devices, but the bonding configuration tries to enslave eth2 and eth3

(which may later be assigned to the tg3 devices).

Adding the following:

add above bonding e1000 tg3

causes modprobe to load e1000 then tg3, in that order, when

bonding is loaded.  This command is fully documented in the

modules.conf manual page.

On systems utilizing modprobe.conf (or modprobe.conf.local),

an equivalent problem can occur.  In this case, the following can be

added to modprobe.conf (or modprobe.conf.local, as appropriate), as

follows (all on one line; it has been split here for clarity):

install bonding /sbin/modprobe tg3; /sbin/modprobe e1000;

/sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bonding

This will, when loading the bonding module, rather than

performing the normal action, instead execute the provided command.

This command loads the device drivers in the order needed, then calls

modprobe with --ignore-install to cause the normal action to then take

place.  Full documentation on this can be found in the modprobe.conf

and modprobe manual pages.

8.3. Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon

---------------------------------------------------------

By default, bonding enables the use_carrier option, which

instructs bonding to trust the driver to maintain carrier state.

As discussed in the options section, above, some drivers do

not support the netif_carrier_on/_off link state tracking system.

With use_carrier enabled, bonding will always see these links as up,

regardless of their actual state.

Additionally, other drivers do support netif_carrier, but do

not maintain it in real time, e.g., only polling the link state at

some fixed interval.  In this case, miimon will detect failures, but

only after some long period of time has expired.  If it appears that

miimon is very slow in detecting link failures, try specifying

use_carrier=0 to see if that improves the failure detection time.  If

it does, then it may be that the driver checks the carrier state at a

fixed interval, but does not cache the MII register values (so the

use_carrier=0 method of querying the registers directly works).  If

use_carrier=0 does not improve the failover, then the driver may cache

the registers, or the problem may be elsewhere.

Also, remember that miimon only checks for the device's

carrier state.  It has no way to determine the state of devices on or

beyond other ports of a switch, or if a switch is refusing to pass

traffic while still maintaining carrier on.

9. SNMP agents

===============

If running SNMP agents, the bonding driver should be loaded

before any network drivers participating in a bond.  This requirement

is due to the interface index (ipAdEntIfIndex) being associated to

the first interface found with a given IP address.  That is, there is

only one ipAdEntIfIndex for each IP address.  For example, if eth0 and

eth1 are slaves of bond0 and the driver for eth0 is loaded before the

bonding driver, the interface for the IP address will be associated

with the eth0 interface.  This configuration is shown below, the IP

address 192.168.1.1 has an interface index of 2 which indexes to eth0

in the ifDescr table (ifDescr.2).

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = eth0

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth1

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth2

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth3

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = bond0

     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 5

     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2

     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 4

     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1

This problem is avoided by loading the bonding driver before

any network drivers participating in a bond.  Below is an example of

loading the bonding driver first, the IP address 192.168.1.1 is

correctly associated with ifDescr.2.

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = bond0

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth0

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth1

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth2

     interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = eth3

     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 6

     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2

     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 5

     ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1

While some distributions may not report the interface name in

ifDescr, the association between the IP address and IfIndex remains

and SNMP functions such as Interface_Scan_Next will report that

association.

10. Promiscuous mode

====================

When running network monitoring tools, e.g., tcpdump, it is

common to enable promiscuous mode on the device, so that all traffic

is seen (instead of seeing only traffic destined for the local host).

The bonding driver handles promiscuous mode changes to the bonding

master device (e.g., bond0), and propagates the setting to the slave

devices.

For the balance-rr, balance-xor, broadcast, and 802.3ad modes,

the promiscuous mode setting is propagated to all slaves.

For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, the

promiscuous mode setting is propagated only to the active slave.

For balance-tlb mode, the active slave is the slave currently

receiving inbound traffic.

For balance-alb mode, the active slave is the slave used as a

"primary."  This slave is used for mode-specific control traffic, for

sending to peers that are unassigned or if the load is unbalanced.

For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, when

the active slave changes (e.g., due to a link failure), the

promiscuous setting will be propagated to the new active slave.

11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability

=============================================

High Availability refers to configurations that provide

maximum network availability by having redundant or backup devices,

links or switches between the host and the rest of the world.  The

goal is to provide the maximum availability of network connectivity

(i.e., the network always works), even though other configurations

could provide higher throughput.

11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology

--------------------------------------------------

If two hosts (or a host and a single switch) are directly

connected via multiple physical links, then there is no availability

penalty to optimizing for maximum bandwidth.  In this case, there is

only one switch (or peer), so if it fails, there is no alternative

access to fail over to.  Additionally, the bonding load balance modes

support link monitoring of their members, so if individual links fail,

the load will be rebalanced across the remaining devices.

See Section 13, "Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput"

for information on configuring bonding with one peer device.

11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology

----------------------------------------------------

With multiple switches, the configuration of bonding and the

network changes dramatically.  In multiple switch topologies, there is

a trade off between network availability and usable bandwidth.

Below is a sample network, configured to maximize the

availability of the network:

                |                                     |

                |port3                           port3|

          +-----+----+                          +-----+----+

          |          |port2       ISL      port2|          |

          | switch A +--------------------------+ switch B |

          |          |                          |          |

          +-----+----+                          +-----++---+

                |port1                           port1|

                |             +-------+               |

                +-------------+ host1 +---------------+

                         eth0 +-------+ eth1

In this configuration, there is a link between the two

switches (ISL, or inter switch link), and multiple ports connecting to

the outside world ("port3" on each switch).  There is no technical

reason that this could not be extended to a third switch.

11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology

-------------------------------------------------------------

In a topology such as the example above, the active-backup and

broadcast modes are the only useful bonding modes when optimizing for

availability; the other modes require all links to terminate on the

same peer for them to behave rationally.

active-backup: This is generally the preferred mode, particularly if

the switches have an ISL and play together well.  If the

network configuration is such that one switch is specifically

a backup switch (e.g., has lower capacity, higher cost, etc),

then the primary option can be used to insure that the

preferred link is always used when it is available.

broadcast: This mode is really a special purpose mode, and is suitable

only for very specific needs.  For example, if the two

switches are not connected (no ISL), and the networks beyond

them are totally independent.  In this case, if it is

necessary for some specific one-way traffic to reach both

independent networks, then the broadcast mode may be suitable.

11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring Selection for Multiple Switch Topology

----------------------------------------------------------------

The choice of link monitoring ultimately depends upon your

switch.  If the switch can reliably fail ports in response to other

failures, then either the MII or ARP monitors should work.  For

example, in the above example, if the "port3" link fails at the remote

end, the MII monitor has no direct means to detect this.  The ARP

monitor could be configured with a target at the remote end of port3,

thus detecting that failure without switch support.

In general, however, in a multiple switch topology, the ARP

monitor can provide a higher level of reliability in detecting end to

end connectivity failures (which may be caused by the failure of any

individual component to pass traffic for any reason).  Additionally,

the ARP monitor should be configured with multiple targets (at least

one for each switch in the network).  This will insure that,

regardless of which switch is active, the ARP monitor has a suitable

target to query.

Note, also, that of late many switches now support a functionality

generally referred to as "trunk failover."  This is a feature of the

switch that causes the link state of a particular switch port to be set

down (or up) when the state of another switch port goes down (or up).

It's purpose is to propogate link failures from logically "exterior" ports

to the logically "interior" ports that bonding is able to monitor via

miimon.  Availability and configuration for trunk failover varies by

switch, but this can be a viable alternative to the ARP monitor when using

suitable switches.

12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput

==============================================

12.1 Maximizing Throughput in a Single Switch Topology

------------------------------------------------------

In a single switch configuration, the best method to maximize

throughput depends upon the application and network environment.  The

various load balancing modes each have strengths and weaknesses in

different environments, as detailed below.

For this discussion, we will break down the topologies into

two categories.  Depending upon the destination of most traffic, we

categorize them into either "gatewayed" or "local" configurations.

In a gatewayed configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily

as a router, and the majority of traffic passes through this router to

other networks.  An example would be the following:

     +----------+                     +----------+

     |          |eth0            port1|          | to other networks

     | Host A   +---------------------+ router   +------------------->

     |          +---------------------+          | Hosts B and C are out

     |          |eth1            port2|          | here somewhere

     +----------+                     +----------+

The router may be a dedicated router device, or another host

acting as a gateway.  For our discussion, the important point is that

the majority of traffic from Host A will pass through the router to

some other network before reaching its final destination.

In a gatewayed network configuration, although Host A may

communicate with many other systems, all of its traffic will be sent

and received via one other peer on the local network, the router.

Note that the case of two systems connected directly via

multiple physical links is, for purposes of configuring bonding, the

same as a gatewayed configuration.  In that case, it happens that all

traffic is destined for the "gateway" itself, not some other network

beyond the gateway.

In a local configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily as

a switch, and the majority of traffic passes through this switch to

reach other stations on the same network.  An example would be the

following:

    +----------+            +----------+       +--------+

    |          |eth0   port1|          +-------+ Host B |

    |  Host A  +------------+  switch  |port3  +--------+

    |          +------------+          |                  +--------+

    |          |eth1   port2|          +------------------+ Host C |

    +----------+            +----------+port4             +--------+

Again, the switch may be a dedicated switch device, or another

host acting as a gateway.  For our discussion, the important point is

that the majority of traffic from Host A is destined for other hosts

on the same local network (Hosts B and C in the above example).

In summary, in a gatewayed configuration, traffic to and from

the bonded device will be to the same MAC level peer on the network

(the gateway itself, i.e., the router), regardless of its final

destination.  In a local configuration, traffic flows directly to and

from the final destinations, thus, each destination (Host B, Host C)

will be addressed directly by their individual MAC addresses.

This distinction between a gatewayed and a local network

configuration is important because many of the load balancing modes

available use the MAC addresses of the local network source and

destination to make load balancing decisions.  The behavior of each

mode is described below.

12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology

-----------------------------------------------------------

This configuration is the easiest to set up and to understand,

although you will have to decide which bonding mode best suits your

needs.  The trade offs for each mode are detailed below:

balance-rr: This mode is the only mode that will permit a single

TCP/IP connection to stripe traffic across multiple

interfaces. It is therefore the only mode that will allow a

single TCP/IP stream to utilize more than one interface's

worth of throughput.  This comes at a cost, however: the

striping generally results in peer systems receiving packets out

of order, causing TCP/IP's congestion control system to kick

in, often by retransmitting segments.

It is possible to adjust TCP/IP's congestion limits by

altering the net.ipv4.tcp_reordering sysctl parameter.  The

usual default value is 3, and the maximum useful value is 127.

For a four interface balance-rr bond, expect that a single

TCP/IP stream will utilize no more than approximately 2.3

interface's worth of throughput, even after adjusting

tcp_reordering.

Note that the fraction of packets that will be delivered out of

order is highly variable, and is unlikely to be zero.  The level

of reordering depends upon a variety of factors, including the

networking interfaces, the switch, and the topology of the

configuration.  Speaking in general terms, higher speed network

cards produce more reordering (due to factors such as packet

coalescing), and a "many to many" topology will reorder at a

higher rate than a "many slow to one fast" configuration.

Many switches do not support any modes that stripe traffic

(instead choosing a port based upon IP or MAC level addresses);

for those devices, traffic for a particular connection flowing

through the switch to a balance-rr bond will not utilize greater

than one interface's worth of bandwidth.

If you are utilizing protocols other than TCP/IP, UDP for

example, and your application can tolerate out of order

delivery, then this mode can allow for single stream datagram

performance that scales near linearly as interfaces are added

to the bond.

This mode requires the switch to have the appropriate ports

configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking."

active-backup: There is not much advantage in this network topology to

the active-backup mode, as the inactive backup devices are all

connected to the same peer as the primary.  In this case, a

load balancing mode (with link monitoring) will provide the

same level of network availability, but with increased

available bandwidth.  On the plus side, active-backup mode

does not require any configuration of the switch, so it may

have value if the hardware available does not support any of

the load balance modes.

balance-xor: This mode will limit traffic such that packets destined

for specific peers will always be sent over the same

interface.  Since the destination is determined by the MAC

addresses involved, this mode works best in a "local" network

configuration (as described above), with destinations all on

the same local network.  This mode is likely to be suboptimal

if all your traffic is passed through a single router (i.e., a

"gatewayed" network configuration, as described above).

As with balance-rr, the switch ports need to be configured for

"etherchannel" or "trunking."

broadcast: Like active-backup, there is not much advantage to this

mode in this type of network topology.

802.3ad: This mode can be a good choice for this type of network

topology.  The 802.3ad mode is an IEEE standard, so all peers

that implement 802.3ad should interoperate well.  The 802.3ad

protocol includes automatic configuration of the aggregates,

so minimal manual configuration of the switch is needed

(typically only to designate that some set of devices is

available for 802.3ad).  The 802.3ad standard also mandates

that frames be delivered in order (within certain limits), so

in general single connections will not see misordering of

packets.  The 802.3ad mode does have some drawbacks: the

standard mandates that all devices in the aggregate operate at

the same speed and duplex.  Also, as with all bonding load

balance modes other than balance-rr, no single connection will

be able to utilize more than a single interface's worth of

bandwidth.  

Additionally, the linux bonding 802.3ad implementation

distributes traffic by peer (using an XOR of MAC addresses),

so in a "gatewayed" configuration, all outgoing traffic will

generally use the same device.  Incoming traffic may also end

up on a single device, but that is dependent upon the

balancing policy of the peer's 8023.ad implementation.  In a

"local" configuration, traffic will be distributed across the

devices in the bond.

Finally, the 802.3ad mode mandates the use of the MII monitor,

therefore, the ARP monitor is not available in this mode.

balance-tlb: The balance-tlb mode balances outgoing traffic by peer.

Since the balancing is done according to MAC address, in a

"gatewayed" configuration (as described above), this mode will

send all traffic across a single device.  However, in a

"local" network configuration, this mode balances multiple

local network peers across devices in a vaguely intelligent

manner (not a simple XOR as in balance-xor or 802.3ad mode),

so that mathematically unlucky MAC addresses (i.e., ones that

XOR to the same value) will not all "bunch up" on a single

interface.

Unlike 802.3ad, interfaces may be of differing speeds, and no

special switch configuration is required.  On the down side,

in this mode all incoming traffic arrives over a single

interface, this mode requires certain ethtool support in the

network device driver of the slave interfaces, and the ARP

monitor is not available.

balance-alb: This mode is everything that balance-tlb is, and more.

It has all of the features (and restrictions) of balance-tlb,

and will also balance incoming traffic from local network

peers (as described in the Bonding Module Options section,

above).

The only additional down side to this mode is that the network

device driver must support changing the hardware address while

the device is open.

12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology

----------------------------------------------------

The choice of link monitoring may largely depend upon which

mode you choose to use.  The more advanced load balancing modes do not

support the use of the ARP monitor, and are thus restricted to using

the MII monitor (which does not provide as high a level of end to end

assurance as the ARP monitor).

12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology

-----------------------------------------------------

Multiple switches may be utilized to optimize for throughput

when they are configured in parallel as part of an isolated network

between two or more systems, for example:

                       +-----------+

                       |  Host A   | 

                       +-+---+---+-+

                         |   |   |

                +--------+   |   +---------+

                |            |             |

         +------+---+  +-----+----+  +-----+----+

         | Switch A |  | Switch B |  | Switch C |

         +------+---+  +-----+----+  +-----+----+

                |            |             |

                +--------+   |   +---------+

                         |   |   |

                       +-+---+---+-+

                       |  Host B   | 

                       +-----------+

In this configuration, the switches are isolated from one

another.  One reason to employ a topology such as this is for an

isolated network with many hosts (a cluster configured for high

performance, for example), using multiple smaller switches can be more

cost effective than a single larger switch, e.g., on a network with 24

hosts, three 24 port switches can be significantly less expensive than

a single 72 port switch.

If access beyond the network is required, an individual host

can be equipped with an additional network device connected to an

external network; this host then additionally acts as a gateway.

12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology

-------------------------------------------------------------

In actual practice, the bonding mode typically employed in

configurations of this type is balance-rr.  Historically, in this

network configuration, the usual caveats about out of order packet

delivery are mitigated by the use of network adapters that do not do

any kind of packet coalescing (via the use of NAPI, or because the

device itself does not generate interrupts until some number of

packets has arrived).  When employed in this fashion, the balance-rr

mode allows individual connections between two hosts to effectively

utilize greater than one interface's bandwidth.

12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology

------------------------------------------------------

Again, in actual practice, the MII monitor is most often used

in this configuration, as performance is given preference over

availability.  The ARP monitor will function in this topology, but its

advantages over the MII monitor are mitigated by the volume of probes

needed as the number of systems involved grows (remember that each

host in the network is configured with bonding).

13. Switch Behavior Issues

==========================

13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays

-------------------------------------------

Some switches exhibit undesirable behavior with regard to the

timing of link up and down reporting by the switch.

First, when a link comes up, some switches may indicate that

the link is up (carrier available), but not pass traffic over the

interface for some period of time.  This delay is typically due to

some type of autonegotiation or routing protocol, but may also occur

during switch initialization (e.g., during recovery after a switch

failure).  If you find this to be a problem, specify an appropriate

value to the updelay bonding module option to delay the use of the

relevant interface(s).

Second, some switches may "bounce" the link state one or more

times while a link is changing state.  This occurs most commonly while

the switch is initializing.  Again, an appropriate updelay value may

help.

Note that when a bonding interface has no active links, the

driver will immediately reuse the first link that goes up, even if the

updelay parameter has been specified (the updelay is ignored in this

case).  If there are slave interfaces waiting for the updelay timeout

to expire, the interface that first went into that state will be

immediately reused.  This reduces down time of the network if the

value of updelay has been overestimated, and since this occurs only in

cases with no connectivity, there is no additional penalty for

ignoring the updelay.

In addition to the concerns about switch timings, if your

switches take a long time to go into backup mode, it may be desirable

to not activate a backup interface immediately after a link goes down.

Failover may be delayed via the downdelay bonding module option.

13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets

--------------------------------

NOTE: Starting with version 3.0.2, the bonding driver has logic to

suppress duplicate packets, which should largely eliminate this problem.

The following description is kept for reference.

It is not uncommon to observe a short burst of duplicated

traffic when the bonding device is first used, or after it has been

idle for some period of time.  This is most easily observed by issuing

a "ping" to some other host on the network, and noticing that the

output from ping flags duplicates (typically one per slave).

For example, on a bond in active-backup mode with five slaves

all connected to one switch, the output may appear as follows:

# ping -n 10.0.4.2

PING 10.0.4.2 (10.0.4.2) from 10.0.3.10 : 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.7 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)

64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)

64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)

64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)

64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.216 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.267 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.222 ms

This is not due to an error in the bonding driver, rather, it

is a side effect of how many switches update their MAC forwarding

tables.  Initially, the switch does not associate the MAC address in

the packet with a particular switch port, and so it may send the

traffic to all ports until its MAC forwarding table is updated.  Since

the interfaces attached to the bond may occupy multiple ports on a

single switch, when the switch (temporarily) floods the traffic to all

ports, the bond device receives multiple copies of the same packet

(one per slave device).

The duplicated packet behavior is switch dependent, some

switches exhibit this, and some do not.  On switches that display this

behavior, it can be induced by clearing the MAC forwarding table (on

most Cisco switches, the privileged command "clear mac address-table

dynamic" will accomplish this).

14. Hardware Specific Considerations

====================================

This section contains additional information for configuring

bonding on specific hardware platforms, or for interfacing bonding

with particular switches or other devices.

14.1 IBM BladeCenter

--------------------

This applies to the JS20 and similar systems.

On the JS20 blades, the bonding driver supports only

balance-rr, active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes.  This is

largely due to the network topology inside the BladeCenter, detailed

below.

JS20 network adapter information

--------------------------------

All JS20s come with two Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet ports

integrated on the planar (that's "motherboard" in IBM-speak).  In the

BladeCenter chassis, the eth0 port of all JS20 blades is hard wired to

I/O Module #1; similarly, all eth1 ports are wired to I/O Module #2.

An add-on Broadcom daughter card can be installed on a JS20 to provide

two more Gigabit Ethernet ports.  These ports, eth2 and eth3, are

wired to I/O Modules 3 and 4, respectively.

Each I/O Module may contain either a switch or a passthrough

module (which allows ports to be directly connected to an external

switch).  Some bonding modes require a specific BladeCenter internal

network topology in order to function; these are detailed below.

Additional BladeCenter-specific networking information can be

found in two IBM Redbooks (www.ibm.com/redbooks):

"IBM eServer BladeCenter Networking Options"

"IBM eServer BladeCenter Layer 2-7 Network Switching"

BladeCenter networking configuration

------------------------------------

Because a BladeCenter can be configured in a very large number

of ways, this discussion will be confined to describing basic

configurations.

Normally, Ethernet Switch Modules (ESMs) are used in I/O

modules 1 and 2.  In this configuration, the eth0 and eth1 ports of a

JS20 will be connected to different internal switches (in the

respective I/O modules).

A passthrough module (OPM or CPM, optical or copper,

passthrough module) connects the I/O module directly to an external

switch.  By using PMs in I/O module #1 and #2, the eth0 and eth1

interfaces of a JS20 can be redirected to the outside world and

connected to a common external switch.

Depending upon the mix of ESMs and PMs, the network will

appear to bonding as either a single switch topology (all PMs) or as a

multiple switch topology (one or more ESMs, zero or more PMs).  It is

also possible to connect ESMs together, resulting in a configuration

much like the example in "High Availability in a Multiple Switch

Topology," above.

Requirements for specific modes

-------------------------------

The balance-rr mode requires the use of passthrough modules

for devices in the bond, all connected to an common external switch.

That switch must be configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking" on the

appropriate ports, as is usual for balance-rr.

The balance-alb and balance-tlb modes will function with

either switch modules or passthrough modules (or a mix).  The only

specific requirement for these modes is that all network interfaces

must be able to reach all destinations for traffic sent over the

bonding device (i.e., the network must converge at some point outside

the BladeCenter).

The active-backup mode has no additional requirements.

Link monitoring issues

----------------------

When an Ethernet Switch Module is in place, only the ARP

monitor will reliably detect link loss to an external switch.  This is

nothing unusual, but examination of the BladeCenter cabinet would

suggest that the "external" network ports are the ethernet ports for

the system, when it fact there is a switch between these "external"

ports and the devices on the JS20 system itself.  The MII monitor is

only able to detect link failures between the ESM and the JS20 system.

When a passthrough module is in place, the MII monitor does

detect failures to the "external" port, which is then directly

connected to the JS20 system.

Other concerns

--------------

The Serial Over LAN (SoL) link is established over the primary

ethernet (eth0) only, therefore, any loss of link to eth0 will result

in losing your SoL connection.  It will not fail over with other

network traffic, as the SoL system is beyond the control of the

bonding driver.

It may be desirable to disable spanning tree on the switch

(either the internal Ethernet Switch Module, or an external switch) to

avoid fail-over delay issues when using bonding.

15. Frequently Asked Questions

==============================

1.  Is it SMP safe?

Yes. The old 2.0.xx channel bonding patch was not SMP safe.

The new driver was designed to be SMP safe from the start.

2.  What type of cards will work with it?

Any Ethernet type cards (you can even mix cards - a Intel

EtherExpress PRO/100 and a 3com 3c905b, for example).  For most modes,

devices need not be of the same speed.

Starting with version 3.2.1, bonding also supports Infiniband

slaves in active-backup mode.

3.  How many bonding devices can I have?

There is no limit.

4.  How many slaves can a bonding device have?

This is limited only by the number of network interfaces Linux

supports and/or the number of network cards you can place in your

system.

5.  What happens when a slave link dies?

If link monitoring is enabled, then the failing device will be

disabled.  The active-backup mode will fail over to a backup link, and

other modes will ignore the failed link.  The link will continue to be

monitored, and should it recover, it will rejoin the bond (in whatever

manner is appropriate for the mode). See the sections on High

Availability and the documentation for each mode for additional

information.

Link monitoring can be enabled via either the miimon or

arp_interval parameters (described in the module parameters section,

above).  In general, miimon monitors the carrier state as sensed by

the underlying network device, and the arp monitor (arp_interval)

monitors connectivity to another host on the local network.

If no link monitoring is configured, the bonding driver will

be unable to detect link failures, and will assume that all links are

always available.  This will likely result in lost packets, and a

resulting degradation of performance.  The precise performance loss

depends upon the bonding mode and network configuration.

6.  Can bonding be used for High Availability?

Yes.  See the section on High Availability for details.

7.  Which switches/systems does it work with?

The full answer to this depends upon the desired mode.

In the basic balance modes (balance-rr and balance-xor), it

works with any system that supports etherchannel (also called

trunking).  Most managed switches currently available have such

support, and many unmanaged switches as well.

The advanced balance modes (balance-tlb and balance-alb) do

not have special switch requirements, but do need device drivers that

support specific features (described in the appropriate section under

module parameters, above).

In 802.3ad mode, it works with systems that support IEEE

802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation.  Most managed and many unmanaged

switches currently available support 802.3ad.

        The active-backup mode should work with any Layer-II switch.

8.  Where does a bonding device get its MAC address from?

When using slave devices that have fixed MAC addresses, or when

the fail_over_mac option is enabled, the bonding device's MAC address is

the MAC address of the active slave.

For other configurations, if not explicitly configured (with

ifconfig or ip link), the MAC address of the bonding device is taken from

its first slave device.  This MAC address is then passed to all following

slaves and remains persistent (even if the first slave is removed) until

the bonding device is brought down or reconfigured.

If you wish to change the MAC address, you can set it with

ifconfig or ip link:

# ifconfig bond0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55

# ip link set bond0 address 66:77:88:99:aa:bb

The MAC address can be also changed by bringing down/up the

device and then changing its slaves (or their order):

# ifconfig bond0 down ; modprobe -r bonding

# ifconfig bond0 .... up

# ifenslave bond0 eth...

This method will automatically take the address from the next

slave that is added.

To restore your slaves' MAC addresses, you need to detach them

from the bond (`ifenslave -d bond0 eth0'). The bonding driver will

then restore the MAC addresses that the slaves had before they were

enslaved.

16. Resources and Links

=======================

The latest version of the bonding driver can be found in the latest

version of the linux kernel, found on http://kernel.org

The latest version of this document can be found in either the latest

kernel source (named Documentation/networking/bonding.txt), or on the

bonding sourceforge site:

http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/bonding

Discussions regarding the bonding driver take place primarily on the

bonding-devel mailing list, hosted at sourceforge.net.  If you have

questions or problems, post them to the list.  The list address is:

bonding-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can

be found at:

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bonding-devel

Donald Becker's Ethernet Drivers and diag programs may be found at :

 - http://www.scyld.com/network/

You will also find a lot of information regarding Ethernet, NWay, MII,

etc. at www.scyld.com.

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转载于:https://blog.51cto.com/www1707/1636266