0001 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
0002
0003 ===================================
0004 Linux Ethernet Bonding Driver HOWTO
0005 ===================================
0006
0007 Latest update: 27 April 2011
0008
0009 Initial release: Thomas Davis <tadavis at lbl.gov>
0010
0011 Corrections, HA extensions: 2000/10/03-15:
0012
0013 - Willy Tarreau <willy at meta-x.org>
0014 - Constantine Gavrilov <const-g at xpert.com>
0015 - Chad N. Tindel <ctindel at ieee dot org>
0016 - Janice Girouard <girouard at us dot ibm dot com>
0017 - Jay Vosburgh <fubar at us dot ibm dot com>
0018
0019 Reorganized and updated Feb 2005 by Jay Vosburgh
0020 Added Sysfs information: 2006/04/24
0021
0022 - Mitch Williams <mitch.a.williams at intel.com>
0023
0024 Introduction
0025 ============
0026
0027 The Linux bonding driver provides a method for aggregating
0028 multiple network interfaces into a single logical "bonded" interface.
0029 The behavior of the bonded interfaces depends upon the mode; generally
0030 speaking, modes provide either hot standby or load balancing services.
0031 Additionally, link integrity monitoring may be performed.
0032
0033 The bonding driver originally came from Donald Becker's
0034 beowulf patches for kernel 2.0. It has changed quite a bit since, and
0035 the original tools from extreme-linux and beowulf sites will not work
0036 with this version of the driver.
0037
0038 For new versions of the driver, updated userspace tools, and
0039 who to ask for help, please follow the links at the end of this file.
0040
0041 .. Table of Contents
0042
0043 1. Bonding Driver Installation
0044
0045 2. Bonding Driver Options
0046
0047 3. Configuring Bonding Devices
0048 3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support
0049 3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig
0050 3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig
0051 3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support
0052 3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts
0053 3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts
0054 3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with Ifenslave
0055 3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually
0056 3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs
0057 3.5 Configuration with Interfaces Support
0058 3.6 Overriding Configuration for Special Cases
0059 3.7 Configuring LACP for 802.3ad mode in a more secure way
0060
0061 4. Querying Bonding Configuration
0062 4.1 Bonding Configuration
0063 4.2 Network Configuration
0064
0065 5. Switch Configuration
0066
0067 6. 802.1q VLAN Support
0068
0069 7. Link Monitoring
0070 7.1 ARP Monitor Operation
0071 7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets
0072 7.3 MII Monitor Operation
0073
0074 8. Potential Trouble Sources
0075 8.1 Adventures in Routing
0076 8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming
0077 8.3 Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon
0078
0079 9. SNMP agents
0080
0081 10. Promiscuous mode
0082
0083 11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability
0084 11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology
0085 11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology
0086 11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
0087 11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
0088
0089 12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput
0090 12.1 Maximum Throughput in a Single Switch Topology
0091 12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology
0092 12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology
0093 12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology
0094 12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
0095 12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
0096
0097 13. Switch Behavior Issues
0098 13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays
0099 13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets
0100
0101 14. Hardware Specific Considerations
0102 14.1 IBM BladeCenter
0103
0104 15. Frequently Asked Questions
0105
0106 16. Resources and Links
0107
0108
0109 1. Bonding Driver Installation
0110 ==============================
0111
0112 Most popular distro kernels ship with the bonding driver
0113 already available as a module. If your distro does not, or you
0114 have need to compile bonding from source (e.g., configuring and
0115 installing a mainline kernel from kernel.org), you'll need to perform
0116 the following steps:
0117
0118 1.1 Configure and build the kernel with bonding
0119 -----------------------------------------------
0120
0121 The current version of the bonding driver is available in the
0122 drivers/net/bonding subdirectory of the most recent kernel source
0123 (which is available on http://kernel.org). Most users "rolling their
0124 own" will want to use the most recent kernel from kernel.org.
0125
0126 Configure kernel with "make menuconfig" (or "make xconfig" or
0127 "make config"), then select "Bonding driver support" in the "Network
0128 device support" section. It is recommended that you configure the
0129 driver as module since it is currently the only way to pass parameters
0130 to the driver or configure more than one bonding device.
0131
0132 Build and install the new kernel and modules.
0133
0134 1.2 Bonding Control Utility
0135 ---------------------------
0136
0137 It is recommended to configure bonding via iproute2 (netlink)
0138 or sysfs, the old ifenslave control utility is obsolete.
0139
0140 2. Bonding Driver Options
0141 =========================
0142
0143 Options for the bonding driver are supplied as parameters to the
0144 bonding module at load time, or are specified via sysfs.
0145
0146 Module options may be given as command line arguments to the
0147 insmod or modprobe command, but are usually specified in either the
0148 ``/etc/modprobe.d/*.conf`` configuration files, or in a distro-specific
0149 configuration file (some of which are detailed in the next section).
0150
0151 Details on bonding support for sysfs is provided in the
0152 "Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs" section, below.
0153
0154 The available bonding driver parameters are listed below. If a
0155 parameter is not specified the default value is used. When initially
0156 configuring a bond, it is recommended "tail -f /var/log/messages" be
0157 run in a separate window to watch for bonding driver error messages.
0158
0159 It is critical that either the miimon or arp_interval and
0160 arp_ip_target parameters be specified, otherwise serious network
0161 degradation will occur during link failures. Very few devices do not
0162 support at least miimon, so there is really no reason not to use it.
0163
0164 Options with textual values will accept either the text name
0165 or, for backwards compatibility, the option value. E.g.,
0166 "mode=802.3ad" and "mode=4" set the same mode.
0167
0168 The parameters are as follows:
0169
0170 active_slave
0171
0172 Specifies the new active slave for modes that support it
0173 (active-backup, balance-alb and balance-tlb). Possible values
0174 are the name of any currently enslaved interface, or an empty
0175 string. If a name is given, the slave and its link must be up in order
0176 to be selected as the new active slave. If an empty string is
0177 specified, the current active slave is cleared, and a new active
0178 slave is selected automatically.
0179
0180 Note that this is only available through the sysfs interface. No module
0181 parameter by this name exists.
0182
0183 The normal value of this option is the name of the currently
0184 active slave, or the empty string if there is no active slave or
0185 the current mode does not use an active slave.
0186
0187 ad_actor_sys_prio
0188
0189 In an AD system, this specifies the system priority. The allowed range
0190 is 1 - 65535. If the value is not specified, it takes 65535 as the
0191 default value.
0192
0193 This parameter has effect only in 802.3ad mode and is available through
0194 SysFs interface.
0195
0196 ad_actor_system
0197
0198 In an AD system, this specifies the mac-address for the actor in
0199 protocol packet exchanges (LACPDUs). The value cannot be a multicast
0200 address. If the all-zeroes MAC is specified, bonding will internally
0201 use the MAC of the bond itself. It is preferred to have the
0202 local-admin bit set for this mac but driver does not enforce it. If
0203 the value is not given then system defaults to using the masters'
0204 mac address as actors' system address.
0205
0206 This parameter has effect only in 802.3ad mode and is available through
0207 SysFs interface.
0208
0209 ad_select
0210
0211 Specifies the 802.3ad aggregation selection logic to use. The
0212 possible values and their effects are:
0213
0214 stable or 0
0215
0216 The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate
0217 bandwidth.
0218
0219 Reselection of the active aggregator occurs only when all
0220 slaves of the active aggregator are down or the active
0221 aggregator has no slaves.
0222
0223 This is the default value.
0224
0225 bandwidth or 1
0226
0227 The active aggregator is chosen by largest aggregate
0228 bandwidth. Reselection occurs if:
0229
0230 - A slave is added to or removed from the bond
0231
0232 - Any slave's link state changes
0233
0234 - Any slave's 802.3ad association state changes
0235
0236 - The bond's administrative state changes to up
0237
0238 count or 2
0239
0240 The active aggregator is chosen by the largest number of
0241 ports (slaves). Reselection occurs as described under the
0242 "bandwidth" setting, above.
0243
0244 The bandwidth and count selection policies permit failover of
0245 802.3ad aggregations when partial failure of the active aggregator
0246 occurs. This keeps the aggregator with the highest availability
0247 (either in bandwidth or in number of ports) active at all times.
0248
0249 This option was added in bonding version 3.4.0.
0250
0251 ad_user_port_key
0252
0253 In an AD system, the port-key has three parts as shown below -
0254
0255 ===== ============
0256 Bits Use
0257 ===== ============
0258 00 Duplex
0259 01-05 Speed
0260 06-15 User-defined
0261 ===== ============
0262
0263 This defines the upper 10 bits of the port key. The values can be
0264 from 0 - 1023. If not given, the system defaults to 0.
0265
0266 This parameter has effect only in 802.3ad mode and is available through
0267 SysFs interface.
0268
0269 all_slaves_active
0270
0271 Specifies that duplicate frames (received on inactive ports) should be
0272 dropped (0) or delivered (1).
0273
0274 Normally, bonding will drop duplicate frames (received on inactive
0275 ports), which is desirable for most users. But there are some times
0276 it is nice to allow duplicate frames to be delivered.
0277
0278 The default value is 0 (drop duplicate frames received on inactive
0279 ports).
0280
0281 arp_interval
0282
0283 Specifies the ARP link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.
0284
0285 The ARP monitor works by periodically checking the slave
0286 devices to determine whether they have sent or received
0287 traffic recently (the precise criteria depends upon the
0288 bonding mode, and the state of the slave). Regular traffic is
0289 generated via ARP probes issued for the addresses specified by
0290 the arp_ip_target option.
0291
0292 This behavior can be modified by the arp_validate option,
0293 below.
0294
0295 If ARP monitoring is used in an etherchannel compatible mode
0296 (modes 0 and 2), the switch should be configured in a mode
0297 that evenly distributes packets across all links. If the
0298 switch is configured to distribute the packets in an XOR
0299 fashion, all replies from the ARP targets will be received on
0300 the same link which could cause the other team members to
0301 fail. ARP monitoring should not be used in conjunction with
0302 miimon. A value of 0 disables ARP monitoring. The default
0303 value is 0.
0304
0305 arp_ip_target
0306
0307 Specifies the IP addresses to use as ARP monitoring peers when
0308 arp_interval is > 0. These are the targets of the ARP request
0309 sent to determine the health of the link to the targets.
0310 Specify these values in ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd format. Multiple IP
0311 addresses must be separated by a comma. At least one IP
0312 address must be given for ARP monitoring to function. The
0313 maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16. The
0314 default value is no IP addresses.
0315
0316 ns_ip6_target
0317
0318 Specifies the IPv6 addresses to use as IPv6 monitoring peers when
0319 arp_interval is > 0. These are the targets of the NS request
0320 sent to determine the health of the link to the targets.
0321 Specify these values in ffff:ffff::ffff:ffff format. Multiple IPv6
0322 addresses must be separated by a comma. At least one IPv6
0323 address must be given for NS/NA monitoring to function. The
0324 maximum number of targets that can be specified is 16. The
0325 default value is no IPv6 addresses.
0326
0327 arp_validate
0328
0329 Specifies whether or not ARP probes and replies should be
0330 validated in any mode that supports arp monitoring, or whether
0331 non-ARP traffic should be filtered (disregarded) for link
0332 monitoring purposes.
0333
0334 Possible values are:
0335
0336 none or 0
0337
0338 No validation or filtering is performed.
0339
0340 active or 1
0341
0342 Validation is performed only for the active slave.
0343
0344 backup or 2
0345
0346 Validation is performed only for backup slaves.
0347
0348 all or 3
0349
0350 Validation is performed for all slaves.
0351
0352 filter or 4
0353
0354 Filtering is applied to all slaves. No validation is
0355 performed.
0356
0357 filter_active or 5
0358
0359 Filtering is applied to all slaves, validation is performed
0360 only for the active slave.
0361
0362 filter_backup or 6
0363
0364 Filtering is applied to all slaves, validation is performed
0365 only for backup slaves.
0366
0367 Validation:
0368
0369 Enabling validation causes the ARP monitor to examine the incoming
0370 ARP requests and replies, and only consider a slave to be up if it
0371 is receiving the appropriate ARP traffic.
0372
0373 For an active slave, the validation checks ARP replies to confirm
0374 that they were generated by an arp_ip_target. Since backup slaves
0375 do not typically receive these replies, the validation performed
0376 for backup slaves is on the broadcast ARP request sent out via the
0377 active slave. It is possible that some switch or network
0378 configurations may result in situations wherein the backup slaves
0379 do not receive the ARP requests; in such a situation, validation
0380 of backup slaves must be disabled.
0381
0382 The validation of ARP requests on backup slaves is mainly helping
0383 bonding to decide which slaves are more likely to work in case of
0384 the active slave failure, it doesn't really guarantee that the
0385 backup slave will work if it's selected as the next active slave.
0386
0387 Validation is useful in network configurations in which multiple
0388 bonding hosts are concurrently issuing ARPs to one or more targets
0389 beyond a common switch. Should the link between the switch and
0390 target fail (but not the switch itself), the probe traffic
0391 generated by the multiple bonding instances will fool the standard
0392 ARP monitor into considering the links as still up. Use of
0393 validation can resolve this, as the ARP monitor will only consider
0394 ARP requests and replies associated with its own instance of
0395 bonding.
0396
0397 Filtering:
0398
0399 Enabling filtering causes the ARP monitor to only use incoming ARP
0400 packets for link availability purposes. Arriving packets that are
0401 not ARPs are delivered normally, but do not count when determining
0402 if a slave is available.
0403
0404 Filtering operates by only considering the reception of ARP
0405 packets (any ARP packet, regardless of source or destination) when
0406 determining if a slave has received traffic for link availability
0407 purposes.
0408
0409 Filtering is useful in network configurations in which significant
0410 levels of third party broadcast traffic would fool the standard
0411 ARP monitor into considering the links as still up. Use of
0412 filtering can resolve this, as only ARP traffic is considered for
0413 link availability purposes.
0414
0415 This option was added in bonding version 3.1.0.
0416
0417 arp_all_targets
0418
0419 Specifies the quantity of arp_ip_targets that must be reachable
0420 in order for the ARP monitor to consider a slave as being up.
0421 This option affects only active-backup mode for slaves with
0422 arp_validation enabled.
0423
0424 Possible values are:
0425
0426 any or 0
0427
0428 consider the slave up only when any of the arp_ip_targets
0429 is reachable
0430
0431 all or 1
0432
0433 consider the slave up only when all of the arp_ip_targets
0434 are reachable
0435
0436 arp_missed_max
0437
0438 Specifies the number of arp_interval monitor checks that must
0439 fail in order for an interface to be marked down by the ARP monitor.
0440
0441 In order to provide orderly failover semantics, backup interfaces
0442 are permitted an extra monitor check (i.e., they must fail
0443 arp_missed_max + 1 times before being marked down).
0444
0445 The default value is 2, and the allowable range is 1 - 255.
0446
0447 downdelay
0448
0449 Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before disabling
0450 a slave after a link failure has been detected. This option
0451 is only valid for the miimon link monitor. The downdelay
0452 value should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it
0453 will be rounded down to the nearest multiple. The default
0454 value is 0.
0455
0456 fail_over_mac
0457
0458 Specifies whether active-backup mode should set all slaves to
0459 the same MAC address at enslavement (the traditional
0460 behavior), or, when enabled, perform special handling of the
0461 bond's MAC address in accordance with the selected policy.
0462
0463 Possible values are:
0464
0465 none or 0
0466
0467 This setting disables fail_over_mac, and causes
0468 bonding to set all slaves of an active-backup bond to
0469 the same MAC address at enslavement time. This is the
0470 default.
0471
0472 active or 1
0473
0474 The "active" fail_over_mac policy indicates that the
0475 MAC address of the bond should always be the MAC
0476 address of the currently active slave. The MAC
0477 address of the slaves is not changed; instead, the MAC
0478 address of the bond changes during a failover.
0479
0480 This policy is useful for devices that cannot ever
0481 alter their MAC address, or for devices that refuse
0482 incoming broadcasts with their own source MAC (which
0483 interferes with the ARP monitor).
0484
0485 The down side of this policy is that every device on
0486 the network must be updated via gratuitous ARP,
0487 vs. just updating a switch or set of switches (which
0488 often takes place for any traffic, not just ARP
0489 traffic, if the switch snoops incoming traffic to
0490 update its tables) for the traditional method. If the
0491 gratuitous ARP is lost, communication may be
0492 disrupted.
0493
0494 When this policy is used in conjunction with the mii
0495 monitor, devices which assert link up prior to being
0496 able to actually transmit and receive are particularly
0497 susceptible to loss of the gratuitous ARP, and an
0498 appropriate updelay setting may be required.
0499
0500 follow or 2
0501
0502 The "follow" fail_over_mac policy causes the MAC
0503 address of the bond to be selected normally (normally
0504 the MAC address of the first slave added to the bond).
0505 However, the second and subsequent slaves are not set
0506 to this MAC address while they are in a backup role; a
0507 slave is programmed with the bond's MAC address at
0508 failover time (and the formerly active slave receives
0509 the newly active slave's MAC address).
0510
0511 This policy is useful for multiport devices that
0512 either become confused or incur a performance penalty
0513 when multiple ports are programmed with the same MAC
0514 address.
0515
0516
0517 The default policy is none, unless the first slave cannot
0518 change its MAC address, in which case the active policy is
0519 selected by default.
0520
0521 This option may be modified via sysfs only when no slaves are
0522 present in the bond.
0523
0524 This option was added in bonding version 3.2.0. The "follow"
0525 policy was added in bonding version 3.3.0.
0526
0527 lacp_active
0528 Option specifying whether to send LACPDU frames periodically.
0529
0530 off or 0
0531 LACPDU frames acts as "speak when spoken to".
0532
0533 on or 1
0534 LACPDU frames are sent along the configured links
0535 periodically. See lacp_rate for more details.
0536
0537 The default is on.
0538
0539 lacp_rate
0540
0541 Option specifying the rate in which we'll ask our link partner
0542 to transmit LACPDU packets in 802.3ad mode. Possible values
0543 are:
0544
0545 slow or 0
0546 Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 30 seconds
0547
0548 fast or 1
0549 Request partner to transmit LACPDUs every 1 second
0550
0551 The default is slow.
0552
0553 max_bonds
0554
0555 Specifies the number of bonding devices to create for this
0556 instance of the bonding driver. E.g., if max_bonds is 3, and
0557 the bonding driver is not already loaded, then bond0, bond1
0558 and bond2 will be created. The default value is 1. Specifying
0559 a value of 0 will load bonding, but will not create any devices.
0560
0561 miimon
0562
0563 Specifies the MII link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.
0564 This determines how often the link state of each slave is
0565 inspected for link failures. A value of zero disables MII
0566 link monitoring. A value of 100 is a good starting point.
0567 The use_carrier option, below, affects how the link state is
0568 determined. See the High Availability section for additional
0569 information. The default value is 0.
0570
0571 min_links
0572
0573 Specifies the minimum number of links that must be active before
0574 asserting carrier. It is similar to the Cisco EtherChannel min-links
0575 feature. This allows setting the minimum number of member ports that
0576 must be up (link-up state) before marking the bond device as up
0577 (carrier on). This is useful for situations where higher level services
0578 such as clustering want to ensure a minimum number of low bandwidth
0579 links are active before switchover. This option only affect 802.3ad
0580 mode.
0581
0582 The default value is 0. This will cause carrier to be asserted (for
0583 802.3ad mode) whenever there is an active aggregator, regardless of the
0584 number of available links in that aggregator. Note that, because an
0585 aggregator cannot be active without at least one available link,
0586 setting this option to 0 or to 1 has the exact same effect.
0587
0588 mode
0589
0590 Specifies one of the bonding policies. The default is
0591 balance-rr (round robin). Possible values are:
0592
0593 balance-rr or 0
0594
0595 Round-robin policy: Transmit packets in sequential
0596 order from the first available slave through the
0597 last. This mode provides load balancing and fault
0598 tolerance.
0599
0600 active-backup or 1
0601
0602 Active-backup policy: Only one slave in the bond is
0603 active. A different slave becomes active if, and only
0604 if, the active slave fails. The bond's MAC address is
0605 externally visible on only one port (network adapter)
0606 to avoid confusing the switch.
0607
0608 In bonding version 2.6.2 or later, when a failover
0609 occurs in active-backup mode, bonding will issue one
0610 or more gratuitous ARPs on the newly active slave.
0611 One gratuitous ARP is issued for the bonding master
0612 interface and each VLAN interfaces configured above
0613 it, provided that the interface has at least one IP
0614 address configured. Gratuitous ARPs issued for VLAN
0615 interfaces are tagged with the appropriate VLAN id.
0616
0617 This mode provides fault tolerance. The primary
0618 option, documented below, affects the behavior of this
0619 mode.
0620
0621 balance-xor or 2
0622
0623 XOR policy: Transmit based on the selected transmit
0624 hash policy. The default policy is a simple [(source
0625 MAC address XOR'd with destination MAC address XOR
0626 packet type ID) modulo slave count]. Alternate transmit
0627 policies may be selected via the xmit_hash_policy option,
0628 described below.
0629
0630 This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance.
0631
0632 broadcast or 3
0633
0634 Broadcast policy: transmits everything on all slave
0635 interfaces. This mode provides fault tolerance.
0636
0637 802.3ad or 4
0638
0639 IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation. Creates
0640 aggregation groups that share the same speed and
0641 duplex settings. Utilizes all slaves in the active
0642 aggregator according to the 802.3ad specification.
0643
0644 Slave selection for outgoing traffic is done according
0645 to the transmit hash policy, which may be changed from
0646 the default simple XOR policy via the xmit_hash_policy
0647 option, documented below. Note that not all transmit
0648 policies may be 802.3ad compliant, particularly in
0649 regards to the packet mis-ordering requirements of
0650 section 43.2.4 of the 802.3ad standard. Differing
0651 peer implementations will have varying tolerances for
0652 noncompliance.
0653
0654 Prerequisites:
0655
0656 1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving
0657 the speed and duplex of each slave.
0658
0659 2. A switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link
0660 aggregation.
0661
0662 Most switches will require some type of configuration
0663 to enable 802.3ad mode.
0664
0665 balance-tlb or 5
0666
0667 Adaptive transmit load balancing: channel bonding that
0668 does not require any special switch support.
0669
0670 In tlb_dynamic_lb=1 mode; the outgoing traffic is
0671 distributed according to the current load (computed
0672 relative to the speed) on each slave.
0673
0674 In tlb_dynamic_lb=0 mode; the load balancing based on
0675 current load is disabled and the load is distributed
0676 only using the hash distribution.
0677
0678 Incoming traffic is received by the current slave.
0679 If the receiving slave fails, another slave takes over
0680 the MAC address of the failed receiving slave.
0681
0682 Prerequisite:
0683
0684 Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving the
0685 speed of each slave.
0686
0687 balance-alb or 6
0688
0689 Adaptive load balancing: includes balance-tlb plus
0690 receive load balancing (rlb) for IPV4 traffic, and
0691 does not require any special switch support. The
0692 receive load balancing is achieved by ARP negotiation.
0693 The bonding driver intercepts the ARP Replies sent by
0694 the local system on their way out and overwrites the
0695 source hardware address with the unique hardware
0696 address of one of the slaves in the bond such that
0697 different peers use different hardware addresses for
0698 the server.
0699
0700 Receive traffic from connections created by the server
0701 is also balanced. When the local system sends an ARP
0702 Request the bonding driver copies and saves the peer's
0703 IP information from the ARP packet. When the ARP
0704 Reply arrives from the peer, its hardware address is
0705 retrieved and the bonding driver initiates an ARP
0706 reply to this peer assigning it to one of the slaves
0707 in the bond. A problematic outcome of using ARP
0708 negotiation for balancing is that each time that an
0709 ARP request is broadcast it uses the hardware address
0710 of the bond. Hence, peers learn the hardware address
0711 of the bond and the balancing of receive traffic
0712 collapses to the current slave. This is handled by
0713 sending updates (ARP Replies) to all the peers with
0714 their individually assigned hardware address such that
0715 the traffic is redistributed. Receive traffic is also
0716 redistributed when a new slave is added to the bond
0717 and when an inactive slave is re-activated. The
0718 receive load is distributed sequentially (round robin)
0719 among the group of highest speed slaves in the bond.
0720
0721 When a link is reconnected or a new slave joins the
0722 bond the receive traffic is redistributed among all
0723 active slaves in the bond by initiating ARP Replies
0724 with the selected MAC address to each of the
0725 clients. The updelay parameter (detailed below) must
0726 be set to a value equal or greater than the switch's
0727 forwarding delay so that the ARP Replies sent to the
0728 peers will not be blocked by the switch.
0729
0730 Prerequisites:
0731
0732 1. Ethtool support in the base drivers for retrieving
0733 the speed of each slave.
0734
0735 2. Base driver support for setting the hardware
0736 address of a device while it is open. This is
0737 required so that there will always be one slave in the
0738 team using the bond hardware address (the
0739 curr_active_slave) while having a unique hardware
0740 address for each slave in the bond. If the
0741 curr_active_slave fails its hardware address is
0742 swapped with the new curr_active_slave that was
0743 chosen.
0744
0745 num_grat_arp,
0746 num_unsol_na
0747
0748 Specify the number of peer notifications (gratuitous ARPs and
0749 unsolicited IPv6 Neighbor Advertisements) to be issued after a
0750 failover event. As soon as the link is up on the new slave
0751 (possibly immediately) a peer notification is sent on the
0752 bonding device and each VLAN sub-device. This is repeated at
0753 the rate specified by peer_notif_delay if the number is
0754 greater than 1.
0755
0756 The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1. These options
0757 affect only the active-backup mode. These options were added for
0758 bonding versions 3.3.0 and 3.4.0 respectively.
0759
0760 From Linux 3.0 and bonding version 3.7.1, these notifications
0761 are generated by the ipv4 and ipv6 code and the numbers of
0762 repetitions cannot be set independently.
0763
0764 packets_per_slave
0765
0766 Specify the number of packets to transmit through a slave before
0767 moving to the next one. When set to 0 then a slave is chosen at
0768 random.
0769
0770 The valid range is 0 - 65535; the default value is 1. This option
0771 has effect only in balance-rr mode.
0772
0773 peer_notif_delay
0774
0775 Specify the delay, in milliseconds, between each peer
0776 notification (gratuitous ARP and unsolicited IPv6 Neighbor
0777 Advertisement) when they are issued after a failover event.
0778 This delay should be a multiple of the link monitor interval
0779 (arp_interval or miimon, whichever is active). The default
0780 value is 0 which means to match the value of the link monitor
0781 interval.
0782
0783 prio
0784 Slave priority. A higher number means higher priority.
0785 The primary slave has the highest priority. This option also
0786 follows the primary_reselect rules.
0787
0788 This option could only be configured via netlink, and is only valid
0789 for active-backup(1), balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6) mode.
0790 The valid value range is a signed 32 bit integer.
0791
0792 The default value is 0.
0793
0794 primary
0795
0796 A string (eth0, eth2, etc) specifying which slave is the
0797 primary device. The specified device will always be the
0798 active slave while it is available. Only when the primary is
0799 off-line will alternate devices be used. This is useful when
0800 one slave is preferred over another, e.g., when one slave has
0801 higher throughput than another.
0802
0803 The primary option is only valid for active-backup(1),
0804 balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6) mode.
0805
0806 primary_reselect
0807
0808 Specifies the reselection policy for the primary slave. This
0809 affects how the primary slave is chosen to become the active slave
0810 when failure of the active slave or recovery of the primary slave
0811 occurs. This option is designed to prevent flip-flopping between
0812 the primary slave and other slaves. Possible values are:
0813
0814 always or 0 (default)
0815
0816 The primary slave becomes the active slave whenever it
0817 comes back up.
0818
0819 better or 1
0820
0821 The primary slave becomes the active slave when it comes
0822 back up, if the speed and duplex of the primary slave is
0823 better than the speed and duplex of the current active
0824 slave.
0825
0826 failure or 2
0827
0828 The primary slave becomes the active slave only if the
0829 current active slave fails and the primary slave is up.
0830
0831 The primary_reselect setting is ignored in two cases:
0832
0833 If no slaves are active, the first slave to recover is
0834 made the active slave.
0835
0836 When initially enslaved, the primary slave is always made
0837 the active slave.
0838
0839 Changing the primary_reselect policy via sysfs will cause an
0840 immediate selection of the best active slave according to the new
0841 policy. This may or may not result in a change of the active
0842 slave, depending upon the circumstances.
0843
0844 This option was added for bonding version 3.6.0.
0845
0846 tlb_dynamic_lb
0847
0848 Specifies if dynamic shuffling of flows is enabled in tlb
0849 mode. The value has no effect on any other modes.
0850
0851 The default behavior of tlb mode is to shuffle active flows across
0852 slaves based on the load in that interval. This gives nice lb
0853 characteristics but can cause packet reordering. If re-ordering is
0854 a concern use this variable to disable flow shuffling and rely on
0855 load balancing provided solely by the hash distribution.
0856 xmit-hash-policy can be used to select the appropriate hashing for
0857 the setup.
0858
0859 The sysfs entry can be used to change the setting per bond device
0860 and the initial value is derived from the module parameter. The
0861 sysfs entry is allowed to be changed only if the bond device is
0862 down.
0863
0864 The default value is "1" that enables flow shuffling while value "0"
0865 disables it. This option was added in bonding driver 3.7.1
0866
0867
0868 updelay
0869
0870 Specifies the time, in milliseconds, to wait before enabling a
0871 slave after a link recovery has been detected. This option is
0872 only valid for the miimon link monitor. The updelay value
0873 should be a multiple of the miimon value; if not, it will be
0874 rounded down to the nearest multiple. The default value is 0.
0875
0876 use_carrier
0877
0878 Specifies whether or not miimon should use MII or ETHTOOL
0879 ioctls vs. netif_carrier_ok() to determine the link
0880 status. The MII or ETHTOOL ioctls are less efficient and
0881 utilize a deprecated calling sequence within the kernel. The
0882 netif_carrier_ok() relies on the device driver to maintain its
0883 state with netif_carrier_on/off; at this writing, most, but
0884 not all, device drivers support this facility.
0885
0886 If bonding insists that the link is up when it should not be,
0887 it may be that your network device driver does not support
0888 netif_carrier_on/off. The default state for netif_carrier is
0889 "carrier on," so if a driver does not support netif_carrier,
0890 it will appear as if the link is always up. In this case,
0891 setting use_carrier to 0 will cause bonding to revert to the
0892 MII / ETHTOOL ioctl method to determine the link state.
0893
0894 A value of 1 enables the use of netif_carrier_ok(), a value of
0895 0 will use the deprecated MII / ETHTOOL ioctls. The default
0896 value is 1.
0897
0898 xmit_hash_policy
0899
0900 Selects the transmit hash policy to use for slave selection in
0901 balance-xor, 802.3ad, and tlb modes. Possible values are:
0902
0903 layer2
0904
0905 Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses and packet type ID
0906 field to generate the hash. The formula is
0907
0908 hash = source MAC[5] XOR destination MAC[5] XOR packet type ID
0909 slave number = hash modulo slave count
0910
0911 This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular
0912 network peer on the same slave.
0913
0914 This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant.
0915
0916 layer2+3
0917
0918 This policy uses a combination of layer2 and layer3
0919 protocol information to generate the hash.
0920
0921 Uses XOR of hardware MAC addresses and IP addresses to
0922 generate the hash. The formula is
0923
0924 hash = source MAC[5] XOR destination MAC[5] XOR packet type ID
0925 hash = hash XOR source IP XOR destination IP
0926 hash = hash XOR (hash RSHIFT 16)
0927 hash = hash XOR (hash RSHIFT 8)
0928 And then hash is reduced modulo slave count.
0929
0930 If the protocol is IPv6 then the source and destination
0931 addresses are first hashed using ipv6_addr_hash.
0932
0933 This algorithm will place all traffic to a particular
0934 network peer on the same slave. For non-IP traffic,
0935 the formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit
0936 hash policy.
0937
0938 This policy is intended to provide a more balanced
0939 distribution of traffic than layer2 alone, especially
0940 in environments where a layer3 gateway device is
0941 required to reach most destinations.
0942
0943 This algorithm is 802.3ad compliant.
0944
0945 layer3+4
0946
0947 This policy uses upper layer protocol information,
0948 when available, to generate the hash. This allows for
0949 traffic to a particular network peer to span multiple
0950 slaves, although a single connection will not span
0951 multiple slaves.
0952
0953 The formula for unfragmented TCP and UDP packets is
0954
0955 hash = source port, destination port (as in the header)
0956 hash = hash XOR source IP XOR destination IP
0957 hash = hash XOR (hash RSHIFT 16)
0958 hash = hash XOR (hash RSHIFT 8)
0959 And then hash is reduced modulo slave count.
0960
0961 If the protocol is IPv6 then the source and destination
0962 addresses are first hashed using ipv6_addr_hash.
0963
0964 For fragmented TCP or UDP packets and all other IPv4 and
0965 IPv6 protocol traffic, the source and destination port
0966 information is omitted. For non-IP traffic, the
0967 formula is the same as for the layer2 transmit hash
0968 policy.
0969
0970 This algorithm is not fully 802.3ad compliant. A
0971 single TCP or UDP conversation containing both
0972 fragmented and unfragmented packets will see packets
0973 striped across two interfaces. This may result in out
0974 of order delivery. Most traffic types will not meet
0975 this criteria, as TCP rarely fragments traffic, and
0976 most UDP traffic is not involved in extended
0977 conversations. Other implementations of 802.3ad may
0978 or may not tolerate this noncompliance.
0979
0980 encap2+3
0981
0982 This policy uses the same formula as layer2+3 but it
0983 relies on skb_flow_dissect to obtain the header fields
0984 which might result in the use of inner headers if an
0985 encapsulation protocol is used. For example this will
0986 improve the performance for tunnel users because the
0987 packets will be distributed according to the encapsulated
0988 flows.
0989
0990 encap3+4
0991
0992 This policy uses the same formula as layer3+4 but it
0993 relies on skb_flow_dissect to obtain the header fields
0994 which might result in the use of inner headers if an
0995 encapsulation protocol is used. For example this will
0996 improve the performance for tunnel users because the
0997 packets will be distributed according to the encapsulated
0998 flows.
0999
1000 vlan+srcmac
1001
1002 This policy uses a very rudimentary vlan ID and source mac
1003 hash to load-balance traffic per-vlan, with failover
1004 should one leg fail. The intended use case is for a bond
1005 shared by multiple virtual machines, all configured to
1006 use their own vlan, to give lacp-like functionality
1007 without requiring lacp-capable switching hardware.
1008
1009 The formula for the hash is simply
1010
1011 hash = (vlan ID) XOR (source MAC vendor) XOR (source MAC dev)
1012
1013 The default value is layer2. This option was added in bonding
1014 version 2.6.3. In earlier versions of bonding, this parameter
1015 does not exist, and the layer2 policy is the only policy. The
1016 layer2+3 value was added for bonding version 3.2.2.
1017
1018 resend_igmp
1019
1020 Specifies the number of IGMP membership reports to be issued after
1021 a failover event. One membership report is issued immediately after
1022 the failover, subsequent packets are sent in each 200ms interval.
1023
1024 The valid range is 0 - 255; the default value is 1. A value of 0
1025 prevents the IGMP membership report from being issued in response
1026 to the failover event.
1027
1028 This option is useful for bonding modes balance-rr (0), active-backup
1029 (1), balance-tlb (5) and balance-alb (6), in which a failover can
1030 switch the IGMP traffic from one slave to another. Therefore a fresh
1031 IGMP report must be issued to cause the switch to forward the incoming
1032 IGMP traffic over the newly selected slave.
1033
1034 This option was added for bonding version 3.7.0.
1035
1036 lp_interval
1037
1038 Specifies the number of seconds between instances where the bonding
1039 driver sends learning packets to each slaves peer switch.
1040
1041 The valid range is 1 - 0x7fffffff; the default value is 1. This Option
1042 has effect only in balance-tlb and balance-alb modes.
1043
1044 3. Configuring Bonding Devices
1045 ==============================
1046
1047 You can configure bonding using either your distro's network
1048 initialization scripts, or manually using either iproute2 or the
1049 sysfs interface. Distros generally use one of three packages for the
1050 network initialization scripts: initscripts, sysconfig or interfaces.
1051 Recent versions of these packages have support for bonding, while older
1052 versions do not.
1053
1054 We will first describe the options for configuring bonding for
1055 distros using versions of initscripts, sysconfig and interfaces with full
1056 or partial support for bonding, then provide information on enabling
1057 bonding without support from the network initialization scripts (i.e.,
1058 older versions of initscripts or sysconfig).
1059
1060 If you're unsure whether your distro uses sysconfig,
1061 initscripts or interfaces, or don't know if it's new enough, have no fear.
1062 Determining this is fairly straightforward.
1063
1064 First, look for a file called interfaces in /etc/network directory.
1065 If this file is present in your system, then your system use interfaces. See
1066 Configuration with Interfaces Support.
1067
1068 Else, issue the command::
1069
1070 $ rpm -qf /sbin/ifup
1071
1072 It will respond with a line of text starting with either
1073 "initscripts" or "sysconfig," followed by some numbers. This is the
1074 package that provides your network initialization scripts.
1075
1076 Next, to determine if your installation supports bonding,
1077 issue the command::
1078
1079 $ grep ifenslave /sbin/ifup
1080
1081 If this returns any matches, then your initscripts or
1082 sysconfig has support for bonding.
1083
1084 3.1 Configuration with Sysconfig Support
1085 ----------------------------------------
1086
1087 This section applies to distros using a version of sysconfig
1088 with bonding support, for example, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.
1089
1090 SuSE SLES 9's networking configuration system does support
1091 bonding, however, at this writing, the YaST system configuration
1092 front end does not provide any means to work with bonding devices.
1093 Bonding devices can be managed by hand, however, as follows.
1094
1095 First, if they have not already been configured, configure the
1096 slave devices. On SLES 9, this is most easily done by running the
1097 yast2 sysconfig configuration utility. The goal is for to create an
1098 ifcfg-id file for each slave device. The simplest way to accomplish
1099 this is to configure the devices for DHCP (this is only to get the
1100 file ifcfg-id file created; see below for some issues with DHCP). The
1101 name of the configuration file for each device will be of the form::
1102
1103 ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
1104
1105 Where the "xx" portion will be replaced with the digits from
1106 the device's permanent MAC address.
1107
1108 Once the set of ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files has been
1109 created, it is necessary to edit the configuration files for the slave
1110 devices (the MAC addresses correspond to those of the slave devices).
1111 Before editing, the file will contain multiple lines, and will look
1112 something like this::
1113
1114 BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
1115 STARTMODE='on'
1116 USERCTL='no'
1117 UNIQUE='XNzu.WeZGOGF+4wE'
1118 _nm_name='bus-pci-0001:61:01.0'
1119
1120 Change the BOOTPROTO and STARTMODE lines to the following::
1121
1122 BOOTPROTO='none'
1123 STARTMODE='off'
1124
1125 Do not alter the UNIQUE or _nm_name lines. Remove any other
1126 lines (USERCTL, etc).
1127
1128 Once the ifcfg-id-xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx files have been modified,
1129 it's time to create the configuration file for the bonding device
1130 itself. This file is named ifcfg-bondX, where X is the number of the
1131 bonding device to create, starting at 0. The first such file is
1132 ifcfg-bond0, the second is ifcfg-bond1, and so on. The sysconfig
1133 network configuration system will correctly start multiple instances
1134 of bonding.
1135
1136 The contents of the ifcfg-bondX file is as follows::
1137
1138 BOOTPROTO="static"
1139 BROADCAST="10.0.2.255"
1140 IPADDR="10.0.2.10"
1141 NETMASK="255.255.0.0"
1142 NETWORK="10.0.2.0"
1143 REMOTE_IPADDR=""
1144 STARTMODE="onboot"
1145 BONDING_MASTER="yes"
1146 BONDING_MODULE_OPTS="mode=active-backup miimon=100"
1147 BONDING_SLAVE0="eth0"
1148 BONDING_SLAVE1="bus-pci-0000:06:08.1"
1149
1150 Replace the sample BROADCAST, IPADDR, NETMASK and NETWORK
1151 values with the appropriate values for your network.
1152
1153 The STARTMODE specifies when the device is brought online.
1154 The possible values are:
1155
1156 ======== ======================================================
1157 onboot The device is started at boot time. If you're not
1158 sure, this is probably what you want.
1159
1160 manual The device is started only when ifup is called
1161 manually. Bonding devices may be configured this
1162 way if you do not wish them to start automatically
1163 at boot for some reason.
1164
1165 hotplug The device is started by a hotplug event. This is not
1166 a valid choice for a bonding device.
1167
1168 off or The device configuration is ignored.
1169 ignore
1170 ======== ======================================================
1171
1172 The line BONDING_MASTER='yes' indicates that the device is a
1173 bonding master device. The only useful value is "yes."
1174
1175 The contents of BONDING_MODULE_OPTS are supplied to the
1176 instance of the bonding module for this device. Specify the options
1177 for the bonding mode, link monitoring, and so on here. Do not include
1178 the max_bonds bonding parameter; this will confuse the configuration
1179 system if you have multiple bonding devices.
1180
1181 Finally, supply one BONDING_SLAVEn="slave device" for each
1182 slave. where "n" is an increasing value, one for each slave. The
1183 "slave device" is either an interface name, e.g., "eth0", or a device
1184 specifier for the network device. The interface name is easier to
1185 find, but the ethN names are subject to change at boot time if, e.g.,
1186 a device early in the sequence has failed. The device specifiers
1187 (bus-pci-0000:06:08.1 in the example above) specify the physical
1188 network device, and will not change unless the device's bus location
1189 changes (for example, it is moved from one PCI slot to another). The
1190 example above uses one of each type for demonstration purposes; most
1191 configurations will choose one or the other for all slave devices.
1192
1193 When all configuration files have been modified or created,
1194 networking must be restarted for the configuration changes to take
1195 effect. This can be accomplished via the following::
1196
1197 # /etc/init.d/network restart
1198
1199 Note that the network control script (/sbin/ifdown) will
1200 remove the bonding module as part of the network shutdown processing,
1201 so it is not necessary to remove the module by hand if, e.g., the
1202 module parameters have changed.
1203
1204 Also, at this writing, YaST/YaST2 will not manage bonding
1205 devices (they do not show bonding interfaces on its list of network
1206 devices). It is necessary to edit the configuration file by hand to
1207 change the bonding configuration.
1208
1209 Additional general options and details of the ifcfg file
1210 format can be found in an example ifcfg template file::
1211
1212 /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template
1213
1214 Note that the template does not document the various ``BONDING_*``
1215 settings described above, but does describe many of the other options.
1216
1217 3.1.1 Using DHCP with Sysconfig
1218 -------------------------------
1219
1220 Under sysconfig, configuring a device with BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
1221 will cause it to query DHCP for its IP address information. At this
1222 writing, this does not function for bonding devices; the scripts
1223 attempt to obtain the device address from DHCP prior to adding any of
1224 the slave devices. Without active slaves, the DHCP requests are not
1225 sent to the network.
1226
1227 3.1.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Sysconfig
1228 -----------------------------------------------
1229
1230 The sysconfig network initialization system is capable of
1231 handling multiple bonding devices. All that is necessary is for each
1232 bonding instance to have an appropriately configured ifcfg-bondX file
1233 (as described above). Do not specify the "max_bonds" parameter to any
1234 instance of bonding, as this will confuse sysconfig. If you require
1235 multiple bonding devices with identical parameters, create multiple
1236 ifcfg-bondX files.
1237
1238 Because the sysconfig scripts supply the bonding module
1239 options in the ifcfg-bondX file, it is not necessary to add them to
1240 the system ``/etc/modules.d/*.conf`` configuration files.
1241
1242 3.2 Configuration with Initscripts Support
1243 ------------------------------------------
1244
1245 This section applies to distros using a recent version of
1246 initscripts with bonding support, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
1247 version 3 or later, Fedora, etc. On these systems, the network
1248 initialization scripts have knowledge of bonding, and can be configured to
1249 control bonding devices. Note that older versions of the initscripts
1250 package have lower levels of support for bonding; this will be noted where
1251 applicable.
1252
1253 These distros will not automatically load the network adapter
1254 driver unless the ethX device is configured with an IP address.
1255 Because of this constraint, users must manually configure a
1256 network-script file for all physical adapters that will be members of
1257 a bondX link. Network script files are located in the directory:
1258
1259 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
1260
1261 The file name must be prefixed with "ifcfg-eth" and suffixed
1262 with the adapter's physical adapter number. For example, the script
1263 for eth0 would be named /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.
1264 Place the following text in the file::
1265
1266 DEVICE=eth0
1267 USERCTL=no
1268 ONBOOT=yes
1269 MASTER=bond0
1270 SLAVE=yes
1271 BOOTPROTO=none
1272
1273 The DEVICE= line will be different for every ethX device and
1274 must correspond with the name of the file, i.e., ifcfg-eth1 must have
1275 a device line of DEVICE=eth1. The setting of the MASTER= line will
1276 also depend on the final bonding interface name chosen for your bond.
1277 As with other network devices, these typically start at 0, and go up
1278 one for each device, i.e., the first bonding instance is bond0, the
1279 second is bond1, and so on.
1280
1281 Next, create a bond network script. The file name for this
1282 script will be /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bondX where X is
1283 the number of the bond. For bond0 the file is named "ifcfg-bond0",
1284 for bond1 it is named "ifcfg-bond1", and so on. Within that file,
1285 place the following text::
1286
1287 DEVICE=bond0
1288 IPADDR=192.168.1.1
1289 NETMASK=255.255.255.0
1290 NETWORK=192.168.1.0
1291 BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
1292 ONBOOT=yes
1293 BOOTPROTO=none
1294 USERCTL=no
1295
1296 Be sure to change the networking specific lines (IPADDR,
1297 NETMASK, NETWORK and BROADCAST) to match your network configuration.
1298
1299 For later versions of initscripts, such as that found with Fedora
1300 7 (or later) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5 (or later), it is possible,
1301 and, indeed, preferable, to specify the bonding options in the ifcfg-bond0
1302 file, e.g. a line of the format::
1303
1304 BONDING_OPTS="mode=active-backup arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.1.254"
1305
1306 will configure the bond with the specified options. The options
1307 specified in BONDING_OPTS are identical to the bonding module parameters
1308 except for the arp_ip_target field when using versions of initscripts older
1309 than and 8.57 (Fedora 8) and 8.45.19 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2). When
1310 using older versions each target should be included as a separate option and
1311 should be preceded by a '+' to indicate it should be added to the list of
1312 queried targets, e.g.,::
1313
1314 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.1 arp_ip_target=+192.168.1.2
1315
1316 is the proper syntax to specify multiple targets. When specifying
1317 options via BONDING_OPTS, it is not necessary to edit
1318 ``/etc/modprobe.d/*.conf``.
1319
1320 For even older versions of initscripts that do not support
1321 BONDING_OPTS, it is necessary to edit /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf, depending upon
1322 your distro) to load the bonding module with your desired options when the
1323 bond0 interface is brought up. The following lines in /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf
1324 will load the bonding module, and select its options:
1325
1326 alias bond0 bonding
1327 options bond0 mode=balance-alb miimon=100
1328
1329 Replace the sample parameters with the appropriate set of
1330 options for your configuration.
1331
1332 Finally run "/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart" as root. This
1333 will restart the networking subsystem and your bond link should be now
1334 up and running.
1335
1336 3.2.1 Using DHCP with Initscripts
1337 ---------------------------------
1338
1339 Recent versions of initscripts (the versions supplied with Fedora
1340 Core 3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, or later versions, are reported to
1341 work) have support for assigning IP information to bonding devices via
1342 DHCP.
1343
1344 To configure bonding for DHCP, configure it as described
1345 above, except replace the line "BOOTPROTO=none" with "BOOTPROTO=dhcp"
1346 and add a line consisting of "TYPE=Bonding". Note that the TYPE value
1347 is case sensitive.
1348
1349 3.2.2 Configuring Multiple Bonds with Initscripts
1350 -------------------------------------------------
1351
1352 Initscripts packages that are included with Fedora 7 and Red Hat
1353 Enterprise Linux 5 support multiple bonding interfaces by simply
1354 specifying the appropriate BONDING_OPTS= in ifcfg-bondX where X is the
1355 number of the bond. This support requires sysfs support in the kernel,
1356 and a bonding driver of version 3.0.0 or later. Other configurations may
1357 not support this method for specifying multiple bonding interfaces; for
1358 those instances, see the "Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually" section,
1359 below.
1360
1361 3.3 Configuring Bonding Manually with iproute2
1362 -----------------------------------------------
1363
1364 This section applies to distros whose network initialization
1365 scripts (the sysconfig or initscripts package) do not have specific
1366 knowledge of bonding. One such distro is SuSE Linux Enterprise Server
1367 version 8.
1368
1369 The general method for these systems is to place the bonding
1370 module parameters into a config file in /etc/modprobe.d/ (as
1371 appropriate for the installed distro), then add modprobe and/or
1372 `ip link` commands to the system's global init script. The name of
1373 the global init script differs; for sysconfig, it is
1374 /etc/init.d/boot.local and for initscripts it is /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
1375
1376 For example, if you wanted to make a simple bond of two e100
1377 devices (presumed to be eth0 and eth1), and have it persist across
1378 reboots, edit the appropriate file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or
1379 /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the following::
1380
1381 modprobe bonding mode=balance-alb miimon=100
1382 modprobe e100
1383 ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1384 ip link set eth0 master bond0
1385 ip link set eth1 master bond0
1386
1387 Replace the example bonding module parameters and bond0
1388 network configuration (IP address, netmask, etc) with the appropriate
1389 values for your configuration.
1390
1391 Unfortunately, this method will not provide support for the
1392 ifup and ifdown scripts on the bond devices. To reload the bonding
1393 configuration, it is necessary to run the initialization script, e.g.,::
1394
1395 # /etc/init.d/boot.local
1396
1397 or::
1398
1399 # /etc/rc.d/rc.local
1400
1401 It may be desirable in such a case to create a separate script
1402 which only initializes the bonding configuration, then call that
1403 separate script from within boot.local. This allows for bonding to be
1404 enabled without re-running the entire global init script.
1405
1406 To shut down the bonding devices, it is necessary to first
1407 mark the bonding device itself as being down, then remove the
1408 appropriate device driver modules. For our example above, you can do
1409 the following::
1410
1411 # ifconfig bond0 down
1412 # rmmod bonding
1413 # rmmod e100
1414
1415 Again, for convenience, it may be desirable to create a script
1416 with these commands.
1417
1418
1419 3.3.1 Configuring Multiple Bonds Manually
1420 -----------------------------------------
1421
1422 This section contains information on configuring multiple
1423 bonding devices with differing options for those systems whose network
1424 initialization scripts lack support for configuring multiple bonds.
1425
1426 If you require multiple bonding devices, but all with the same
1427 options, you may wish to use the "max_bonds" module parameter,
1428 documented above.
1429
1430 To create multiple bonding devices with differing options, it is
1431 preferable to use bonding parameters exported by sysfs, documented in the
1432 section below.
1433
1434 For versions of bonding without sysfs support, the only means to
1435 provide multiple instances of bonding with differing options is to load
1436 the bonding driver multiple times. Note that current versions of the
1437 sysconfig network initialization scripts handle this automatically; if
1438 your distro uses these scripts, no special action is needed. See the
1439 section Configuring Bonding Devices, above, if you're not sure about your
1440 network initialization scripts.
1441
1442 To load multiple instances of the module, it is necessary to
1443 specify a different name for each instance (the module loading system
1444 requires that every loaded module, even multiple instances of the same
1445 module, have a unique name). This is accomplished by supplying multiple
1446 sets of bonding options in ``/etc/modprobe.d/*.conf``, for example::
1447
1448 alias bond0 bonding
1449 options bond0 -o bond0 mode=balance-rr miimon=100
1450
1451 alias bond1 bonding
1452 options bond1 -o bond1 mode=balance-alb miimon=50
1453
1454 will load the bonding module two times. The first instance is
1455 named "bond0" and creates the bond0 device in balance-rr mode with an
1456 miimon of 100. The second instance is named "bond1" and creates the
1457 bond1 device in balance-alb mode with an miimon of 50.
1458
1459 In some circumstances (typically with older distributions),
1460 the above does not work, and the second bonding instance never sees
1461 its options. In that case, the second options line can be substituted
1462 as follows::
1463
1464 install bond1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bonding -o bond1 \
1465 mode=balance-alb miimon=50
1466
1467 This may be repeated any number of times, specifying a new and
1468 unique name in place of bond1 for each subsequent instance.
1469
1470 It has been observed that some Red Hat supplied kernels are unable
1471 to rename modules at load time (the "-o bond1" part). Attempts to pass
1472 that option to modprobe will produce an "Operation not permitted" error.
1473 This has been reported on some Fedora Core kernels, and has been seen on
1474 RHEL 4 as well. On kernels exhibiting this problem, it will be impossible
1475 to configure multiple bonds with differing parameters (as they are older
1476 kernels, and also lack sysfs support).
1477
1478 3.4 Configuring Bonding Manually via Sysfs
1479 ------------------------------------------
1480
1481 Starting with version 3.0.0, Channel Bonding may be configured
1482 via the sysfs interface. This interface allows dynamic configuration
1483 of all bonds in the system without unloading the module. It also
1484 allows for adding and removing bonds at runtime. Ifenslave is no
1485 longer required, though it is still supported.
1486
1487 Use of the sysfs interface allows you to use multiple bonds
1488 with different configurations without having to reload the module.
1489 It also allows you to use multiple, differently configured bonds when
1490 bonding is compiled into the kernel.
1491
1492 You must have the sysfs filesystem mounted to configure
1493 bonding this way. The examples in this document assume that you
1494 are using the standard mount point for sysfs, e.g. /sys. If your
1495 sysfs filesystem is mounted elsewhere, you will need to adjust the
1496 example paths accordingly.
1497
1498 Creating and Destroying Bonds
1499 -----------------------------
1500 To add a new bond foo::
1501
1502 # echo +foo > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1503
1504 To remove an existing bond bar::
1505
1506 # echo -bar > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1507
1508 To show all existing bonds::
1509
1510 # cat /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1511
1512 .. note::
1513
1514 due to 4K size limitation of sysfs files, this list may be
1515 truncated if you have more than a few hundred bonds. This is unlikely
1516 to occur under normal operating conditions.
1517
1518 Adding and Removing Slaves
1519 --------------------------
1520 Interfaces may be enslaved to a bond using the file
1521 /sys/class/net/<bond>/bonding/slaves. The semantics for this file
1522 are the same as for the bonding_masters file.
1523
1524 To enslave interface eth0 to bond bond0::
1525
1526 # ifconfig bond0 up
1527 # echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1528
1529 To free slave eth0 from bond bond0::
1530
1531 # echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1532
1533 When an interface is enslaved to a bond, symlinks between the
1534 two are created in the sysfs filesystem. In this case, you would get
1535 /sys/class/net/bond0/slave_eth0 pointing to /sys/class/net/eth0, and
1536 /sys/class/net/eth0/master pointing to /sys/class/net/bond0.
1537
1538 This means that you can tell quickly whether or not an
1539 interface is enslaved by looking for the master symlink. Thus:
1540 # echo -eth0 > /sys/class/net/eth0/master/bonding/slaves
1541 will free eth0 from whatever bond it is enslaved to, regardless of
1542 the name of the bond interface.
1543
1544 Changing a Bond's Configuration
1545 -------------------------------
1546 Each bond may be configured individually by manipulating the
1547 files located in /sys/class/net/<bond name>/bonding
1548
1549 The names of these files correspond directly with the command-
1550 line parameters described elsewhere in this file, and, with the
1551 exception of arp_ip_target, they accept the same values. To see the
1552 current setting, simply cat the appropriate file.
1553
1554 A few examples will be given here; for specific usage
1555 guidelines for each parameter, see the appropriate section in this
1556 document.
1557
1558 To configure bond0 for balance-alb mode::
1559
1560 # ifconfig bond0 down
1561 # echo 6 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1562 - or -
1563 # echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1564
1565 .. note::
1566
1567 The bond interface must be down before the mode can be changed.
1568
1569 To enable MII monitoring on bond0 with a 1 second interval::
1570
1571 # echo 1000 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon
1572
1573 .. note::
1574
1575 If ARP monitoring is enabled, it will disabled when MII
1576 monitoring is enabled, and vice-versa.
1577
1578 To add ARP targets::
1579
1580 # echo +192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1581 # echo +192.168.0.101 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1582
1583 .. note::
1584
1585 up to 16 target addresses may be specified.
1586
1587 To remove an ARP target::
1588
1589 # echo -192.168.0.100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/arp_ip_target
1590
1591 To configure the interval between learning packet transmits::
1592
1593 # echo 12 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/lp_interval
1594
1595 .. note::
1596
1597 the lp_interval is the number of seconds between instances where
1598 the bonding driver sends learning packets to each slaves peer switch. The
1599 default interval is 1 second.
1600
1601 Example Configuration
1602 ---------------------
1603 We begin with the same example that is shown in section 3.3,
1604 executed with sysfs, and without using ifenslave.
1605
1606 To make a simple bond of two e100 devices (presumed to be eth0
1607 and eth1), and have it persist across reboots, edit the appropriate
1608 file (/etc/init.d/boot.local or /etc/rc.d/rc.local), and add the
1609 following::
1610
1611 modprobe bonding
1612 modprobe e100
1613 echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode
1614 ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1615 echo 100 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/miimon
1616 echo +eth0 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1617 echo +eth1 > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
1618
1619 To add a second bond, with two e1000 interfaces in
1620 active-backup mode, using ARP monitoring, add the following lines to
1621 your init script::
1622
1623 modprobe e1000
1624 echo +bond1 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
1625 echo active-backup > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/mode
1626 ifconfig bond1 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
1627 echo +192.168.2.100 /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_ip_target
1628 echo 2000 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/arp_interval
1629 echo +eth2 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves
1630 echo +eth3 > /sys/class/net/bond1/bonding/slaves
1631
1632 3.5 Configuration with Interfaces Support
1633 -----------------------------------------
1634
1635 This section applies to distros which use /etc/network/interfaces file
1636 to describe network interface configuration, most notably Debian and it's
1637 derivatives.
1638
1639 The ifup and ifdown commands on Debian don't support bonding out of
1640 the box. The ifenslave-2.6 package should be installed to provide bonding
1641 support. Once installed, this package will provide ``bond-*`` options
1642 to be used into /etc/network/interfaces.
1643
1644 Note that ifenslave-2.6 package will load the bonding module and use
1645 the ifenslave command when appropriate.
1646
1647 Example Configurations
1648 ----------------------
1649
1650 In /etc/network/interfaces, the following stanza will configure bond0, in
1651 active-backup mode, with eth0 and eth1 as slaves::
1652
1653 auto bond0
1654 iface bond0 inet dhcp
1655 bond-slaves eth0 eth1
1656 bond-mode active-backup
1657 bond-miimon 100
1658 bond-primary eth0 eth1
1659
1660 If the above configuration doesn't work, you might have a system using
1661 upstart for system startup. This is most notably true for recent
1662 Ubuntu versions. The following stanza in /etc/network/interfaces will
1663 produce the same result on those systems::
1664
1665 auto bond0
1666 iface bond0 inet dhcp
1667 bond-slaves none
1668 bond-mode active-backup
1669 bond-miimon 100
1670
1671 auto eth0
1672 iface eth0 inet manual
1673 bond-master bond0
1674 bond-primary eth0 eth1
1675
1676 auto eth1
1677 iface eth1 inet manual
1678 bond-master bond0
1679 bond-primary eth0 eth1
1680
1681 For a full list of ``bond-*`` supported options in /etc/network/interfaces and
1682 some more advanced examples tailored to you particular distros, see the files in
1683 /usr/share/doc/ifenslave-2.6.
1684
1685 3.6 Overriding Configuration for Special Cases
1686 ----------------------------------------------
1687
1688 When using the bonding driver, the physical port which transmits a frame is
1689 typically selected by the bonding driver, and is not relevant to the user or
1690 system administrator. The output port is simply selected using the policies of
1691 the selected bonding mode. On occasion however, it is helpful to direct certain
1692 classes of traffic to certain physical interfaces on output to implement
1693 slightly more complex policies. For example, to reach a web server over a
1694 bonded interface in which eth0 connects to a private network, while eth1
1695 connects via a public network, it may be desirous to bias the bond to send said
1696 traffic over eth0 first, using eth1 only as a fall back, while all other traffic
1697 can safely be sent over either interface. Such configurations may be achieved
1698 using the traffic control utilities inherent in linux.
1699
1700 By default the bonding driver is multiqueue aware and 16 queues are created
1701 when the driver initializes (see Documentation/networking/multiqueue.rst
1702 for details). If more or less queues are desired the module parameter
1703 tx_queues can be used to change this value. There is no sysfs parameter
1704 available as the allocation is done at module init time.
1705
1706 The output of the file /proc/net/bonding/bondX has changed so the output Queue
1707 ID is now printed for each slave::
1708
1709 Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)
1710 Primary Slave: None
1711 Currently Active Slave: eth0
1712 MII Status: up
1713 MII Polling Interval (ms): 0
1714 Up Delay (ms): 0
1715 Down Delay (ms): 0
1716
1717 Slave Interface: eth0
1718 MII Status: up
1719 Link Failure Count: 0
1720 Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cb
1721 Slave queue ID: 0
1722
1723 Slave Interface: eth1
1724 MII Status: up
1725 Link Failure Count: 0
1726 Permanent HW addr: 00:1a:a0:12:8f:cc
1727 Slave queue ID: 2
1728
1729 The queue_id for a slave can be set using the command::
1730
1731 # echo "eth1:2" > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/queue_id
1732
1733 Any interface that needs a queue_id set should set it with multiple calls
1734 like the one above until proper priorities are set for all interfaces. On
1735 distributions that allow configuration via initscripts, multiple 'queue_id'
1736 arguments can be added to BONDING_OPTS to set all needed slave queues.
1737
1738 These queue id's can be used in conjunction with the tc utility to configure
1739 a multiqueue qdisc and filters to bias certain traffic to transmit on certain
1740 slave devices. For instance, say we wanted, in the above configuration to
1741 force all traffic bound to 192.168.1.100 to use eth1 in the bond as its output
1742 device. The following commands would accomplish this::
1743
1744 # tc qdisc add dev bond0 handle 1 root multiq
1745
1746 # tc filter add dev bond0 protocol ip parent 1: prio 1 u32 match ip \
1747 dst 192.168.1.100 action skbedit queue_mapping 2
1748
1749 These commands tell the kernel to attach a multiqueue queue discipline to the
1750 bond0 interface and filter traffic enqueued to it, such that packets with a dst
1751 ip of 192.168.1.100 have their output queue mapping value overwritten to 2.
1752 This value is then passed into the driver, causing the normal output path
1753 selection policy to be overridden, selecting instead qid 2, which maps to eth1.
1754
1755 Note that qid values begin at 1. Qid 0 is reserved to initiate to the driver
1756 that normal output policy selection should take place. One benefit to simply
1757 leaving the qid for a slave to 0 is the multiqueue awareness in the bonding
1758 driver that is now present. This awareness allows tc filters to be placed on
1759 slave devices as well as bond devices and the bonding driver will simply act as
1760 a pass-through for selecting output queues on the slave device rather than
1761 output port selection.
1762
1763 This feature first appeared in bonding driver version 3.7.0 and support for
1764 output slave selection was limited to round-robin and active-backup modes.
1765
1766 3.7 Configuring LACP for 802.3ad mode in a more secure way
1767 ----------------------------------------------------------
1768
1769 When using 802.3ad bonding mode, the Actor (host) and Partner (switch)
1770 exchange LACPDUs. These LACPDUs cannot be sniffed, because they are
1771 destined to link local mac addresses (which switches/bridges are not
1772 supposed to forward). However, most of the values are easily predictable
1773 or are simply the machine's MAC address (which is trivially known to all
1774 other hosts in the same L2). This implies that other machines in the L2
1775 domain can spoof LACPDU packets from other hosts to the switch and potentially
1776 cause mayhem by joining (from the point of view of the switch) another
1777 machine's aggregate, thus receiving a portion of that hosts incoming
1778 traffic and / or spoofing traffic from that machine themselves (potentially
1779 even successfully terminating some portion of flows). Though this is not
1780 a likely scenario, one could avoid this possibility by simply configuring
1781 few bonding parameters:
1782
1783 (a) ad_actor_system : You can set a random mac-address that can be used for
1784 these LACPDU exchanges. The value can not be either NULL or Multicast.
1785 Also it's preferable to set the local-admin bit. Following shell code
1786 generates a random mac-address as described above::
1787
1788 # sys_mac_addr=$(printf '%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x' \
1789 $(( (RANDOM & 0xFE) | 0x02 )) \
1790 $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )) \
1791 $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )) \
1792 $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )) \
1793 $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )) \
1794 $(( RANDOM & 0xFF )))
1795 # echo $sys_mac_addr > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/ad_actor_system
1796
1797 (b) ad_actor_sys_prio : Randomize the system priority. The default value
1798 is 65535, but system can take the value from 1 - 65535. Following shell
1799 code generates random priority and sets it::
1800
1801 # sys_prio=$(( 1 + RANDOM + RANDOM ))
1802 # echo $sys_prio > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/ad_actor_sys_prio
1803
1804 (c) ad_user_port_key : Use the user portion of the port-key. The default
1805 keeps this empty. These are the upper 10 bits of the port-key and value
1806 ranges from 0 - 1023. Following shell code generates these 10 bits and
1807 sets it::
1808
1809 # usr_port_key=$(( RANDOM & 0x3FF ))
1810 # echo $usr_port_key > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/ad_user_port_key
1811
1812
1813 4 Querying Bonding Configuration
1814 =================================
1815
1816 4.1 Bonding Configuration
1817 -------------------------
1818
1819 Each bonding device has a read-only file residing in the
1820 /proc/net/bonding directory. The file contents include information
1821 about the bonding configuration, options and state of each slave.
1822
1823 For example, the contents of /proc/net/bonding/bond0 after the
1824 driver is loaded with parameters of mode=0 and miimon=1000 is
1825 generally as follows::
1826
1827 Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: 2.6.1 (October 29, 2004)
1828 Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)
1829 Currently Active Slave: eth0
1830 MII Status: up
1831 MII Polling Interval (ms): 1000
1832 Up Delay (ms): 0
1833 Down Delay (ms): 0
1834
1835 Slave Interface: eth1
1836 MII Status: up
1837 Link Failure Count: 1
1838
1839 Slave Interface: eth0
1840 MII Status: up
1841 Link Failure Count: 1
1842
1843 The precise format and contents will change depending upon the
1844 bonding configuration, state, and version of the bonding driver.
1845
1846 4.2 Network configuration
1847 -------------------------
1848
1849 The network configuration can be inspected using the ifconfig
1850 command. Bonding devices will have the MASTER flag set; Bonding slave
1851 devices will have the SLAVE flag set. The ifconfig output does not
1852 contain information on which slaves are associated with which masters.
1853
1854 In the example below, the bond0 interface is the master
1855 (MASTER) while eth0 and eth1 are slaves (SLAVE). Notice all slaves of
1856 bond0 have the same MAC address (HWaddr) as bond0 for all modes except
1857 TLB and ALB that require a unique MAC address for each slave::
1858
1859 # /sbin/ifconfig
1860 bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1861 inet addr:XXX.XXX.XXX.YYY Bcast:XXX.XXX.XXX.255 Mask:255.255.252.0
1862 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
1863 RX packets:7224794 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1864 TX packets:3286647 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
1865 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
1866
1867 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1868 UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
1869 RX packets:3573025 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1870 TX packets:1643167 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
1871 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
1872 Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1080
1873
1874 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:F0:1F:37:B4
1875 UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
1876 RX packets:3651769 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
1877 TX packets:1643480 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
1878 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
1879 Interrupt:9 Base address:0x1400
1880
1881 5. Switch Configuration
1882 =======================
1883
1884 For this section, "switch" refers to whatever system the
1885 bonded devices are directly connected to (i.e., where the other end of
1886 the cable plugs into). This may be an actual dedicated switch device,
1887 or it may be another regular system (e.g., another computer running
1888 Linux),
1889
1890 The active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes do not
1891 require any specific configuration of the switch.
1892
1893 The 802.3ad mode requires that the switch have the appropriate
1894 ports configured as an 802.3ad aggregation. The precise method used
1895 to configure this varies from switch to switch, but, for example, a
1896 Cisco 3550 series switch requires that the appropriate ports first be
1897 grouped together in a single etherchannel instance, then that
1898 etherchannel is set to mode "lacp" to enable 802.3ad (instead of
1899 standard EtherChannel).
1900
1901 The balance-rr, balance-xor and broadcast modes generally
1902 require that the switch have the appropriate ports grouped together.
1903 The nomenclature for such a group differs between switches, it may be
1904 called an "etherchannel" (as in the Cisco example, above), a "trunk
1905 group" or some other similar variation. For these modes, each switch
1906 will also have its own configuration options for the switch's transmit
1907 policy to the bond. Typical choices include XOR of either the MAC or
1908 IP addresses. The transmit policy of the two peers does not need to
1909 match. For these three modes, the bonding mode really selects a
1910 transmit policy for an EtherChannel group; all three will interoperate
1911 with another EtherChannel group.
1912
1913
1914 6. 802.1q VLAN Support
1915 ======================
1916
1917 It is possible to configure VLAN devices over a bond interface
1918 using the 8021q driver. However, only packets coming from the 8021q
1919 driver and passing through bonding will be tagged by default. Self
1920 generated packets, for example, bonding's learning packets or ARP
1921 packets generated by either ALB mode or the ARP monitor mechanism, are
1922 tagged internally by bonding itself. As a result, bonding must
1923 "learn" the VLAN IDs configured above it, and use those IDs to tag
1924 self generated packets.
1925
1926 For reasons of simplicity, and to support the use of adapters
1927 that can do VLAN hardware acceleration offloading, the bonding
1928 interface declares itself as fully hardware offloading capable, it gets
1929 the add_vid/kill_vid notifications to gather the necessary
1930 information, and it propagates those actions to the slaves. In case
1931 of mixed adapter types, hardware accelerated tagged packets that
1932 should go through an adapter that is not offloading capable are
1933 "un-accelerated" by the bonding driver so the VLAN tag sits in the
1934 regular location.
1935
1936 VLAN interfaces *must* be added on top of a bonding interface
1937 only after enslaving at least one slave. The bonding interface has a
1938 hardware address of 00:00:00:00:00:00 until the first slave is added.
1939 If the VLAN interface is created prior to the first enslavement, it
1940 would pick up the all-zeroes hardware address. Once the first slave
1941 is attached to the bond, the bond device itself will pick up the
1942 slave's hardware address, which is then available for the VLAN device.
1943
1944 Also, be aware that a similar problem can occur if all slaves
1945 are released from a bond that still has one or more VLAN interfaces on
1946 top of it. When a new slave is added, the bonding interface will
1947 obtain its hardware address from the first slave, which might not
1948 match the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces (which was
1949 ultimately copied from an earlier slave).
1950
1951 There are two methods to insure that the VLAN device operates
1952 with the correct hardware address if all slaves are removed from a
1953 bond interface:
1954
1955 1. Remove all VLAN interfaces then recreate them
1956
1957 2. Set the bonding interface's hardware address so that it
1958 matches the hardware address of the VLAN interfaces.
1959
1960 Note that changing a VLAN interface's HW address would set the
1961 underlying device -- i.e. the bonding interface -- to promiscuous
1962 mode, which might not be what you want.
1963
1964
1965 7. Link Monitoring
1966 ==================
1967
1968 The bonding driver at present supports two schemes for
1969 monitoring a slave device's link state: the ARP monitor and the MII
1970 monitor.
1971
1972 At the present time, due to implementation restrictions in the
1973 bonding driver itself, it is not possible to enable both ARP and MII
1974 monitoring simultaneously.
1975
1976 7.1 ARP Monitor Operation
1977 -------------------------
1978
1979 The ARP monitor operates as its name suggests: it sends ARP
1980 queries to one or more designated peer systems on the network, and
1981 uses the response as an indication that the link is operating. This
1982 gives some assurance that traffic is actually flowing to and from one
1983 or more peers on the local network.
1984
1985 7.2 Configuring Multiple ARP Targets
1986 ------------------------------------
1987
1988 While ARP monitoring can be done with just one target, it can
1989 be useful in a High Availability setup to have several targets to
1990 monitor. In the case of just one target, the target itself may go
1991 down or have a problem making it unresponsive to ARP requests. Having
1992 an additional target (or several) increases the reliability of the ARP
1993 monitoring.
1994
1995 Multiple ARP targets must be separated by commas as follows::
1996
1997 # example options for ARP monitoring with three targets
1998 alias bond0 bonding
1999 options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.1,192.168.0.3,192.168.0.9
2000
2001 For just a single target the options would resemble::
2002
2003 # example options for ARP monitoring with one target
2004 alias bond0 bonding
2005 options bond0 arp_interval=60 arp_ip_target=192.168.0.100
2006
2007
2008 7.3 MII Monitor Operation
2009 -------------------------
2010
2011 The MII monitor monitors only the carrier state of the local
2012 network interface. It accomplishes this in one of three ways: by
2013 depending upon the device driver to maintain its carrier state, by
2014 querying the device's MII registers, or by making an ethtool query to
2015 the device.
2016
2017 If the use_carrier module parameter is 1 (the default value),
2018 then the MII monitor will rely on the driver for carrier state
2019 information (via the netif_carrier subsystem). As explained in the
2020 use_carrier parameter information, above, if the MII monitor fails to
2021 detect carrier loss on the device (e.g., when the cable is physically
2022 disconnected), it may be that the driver does not support
2023 netif_carrier.
2024
2025 If use_carrier is 0, then the MII monitor will first query the
2026 device's (via ioctl) MII registers and check the link state. If that
2027 request fails (not just that it returns carrier down), then the MII
2028 monitor will make an ethtool ETHTOOL_GLINK request to attempt to obtain
2029 the same information. If both methods fail (i.e., the driver either
2030 does not support or had some error in processing both the MII register
2031 and ethtool requests), then the MII monitor will assume the link is
2032 up.
2033
2034 8. Potential Sources of Trouble
2035 ===============================
2036
2037 8.1 Adventures in Routing
2038 -------------------------
2039
2040 When bonding is configured, it is important that the slave
2041 devices not have routes that supersede routes of the master (or,
2042 generally, not have routes at all). For example, suppose the bonding
2043 device bond0 has two slaves, eth0 and eth1, and the routing table is
2044 as follows::
2045
2046 Kernel IP routing table
2047 Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
2048 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 eth0
2049 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 eth1
2050 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 40 0 0 bond0
2051 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 40 0 0 lo
2052
2053 This routing configuration will likely still update the
2054 receive/transmit times in the driver (needed by the ARP monitor), but
2055 may bypass the bonding driver (because outgoing traffic to, in this
2056 case, another host on network 10 would use eth0 or eth1 before bond0).
2057
2058 The ARP monitor (and ARP itself) may become confused by this
2059 configuration, because ARP requests (generated by the ARP monitor)
2060 will be sent on one interface (bond0), but the corresponding reply
2061 will arrive on a different interface (eth0). This reply looks to ARP
2062 as an unsolicited ARP reply (because ARP matches replies on an
2063 interface basis), and is discarded. The MII monitor is not affected
2064 by the state of the routing table.
2065
2066 The solution here is simply to insure that slaves do not have
2067 routes of their own, and if for some reason they must, those routes do
2068 not supersede routes of their master. This should generally be the
2069 case, but unusual configurations or errant manual or automatic static
2070 route additions may cause trouble.
2071
2072 8.2 Ethernet Device Renaming
2073 ----------------------------
2074
2075 On systems with network configuration scripts that do not
2076 associate physical devices directly with network interface names (so
2077 that the same physical device always has the same "ethX" name), it may
2078 be necessary to add some special logic to config files in
2079 /etc/modprobe.d/.
2080
2081 For example, given a modules.conf containing the following::
2082
2083 alias bond0 bonding
2084 options bond0 mode=some-mode miimon=50
2085 alias eth0 tg3
2086 alias eth1 tg3
2087 alias eth2 e1000
2088 alias eth3 e1000
2089
2090 If neither eth0 and eth1 are slaves to bond0, then when the
2091 bond0 interface comes up, the devices may end up reordered. This
2092 happens because bonding is loaded first, then its slave device's
2093 drivers are loaded next. Since no other drivers have been loaded,
2094 when the e1000 driver loads, it will receive eth0 and eth1 for its
2095 devices, but the bonding configuration tries to enslave eth2 and eth3
2096 (which may later be assigned to the tg3 devices).
2097
2098 Adding the following::
2099
2100 add above bonding e1000 tg3
2101
2102 causes modprobe to load e1000 then tg3, in that order, when
2103 bonding is loaded. This command is fully documented in the
2104 modules.conf manual page.
2105
2106 On systems utilizing modprobe an equivalent problem can occur.
2107 In this case, the following can be added to config files in
2108 /etc/modprobe.d/ as::
2109
2110 softdep bonding pre: tg3 e1000
2111
2112 This will load tg3 and e1000 modules before loading the bonding one.
2113 Full documentation on this can be found in the modprobe.d and modprobe
2114 manual pages.
2115
2116 8.3. Painfully Slow Or No Failed Link Detection By Miimon
2117 ---------------------------------------------------------
2118
2119 By default, bonding enables the use_carrier option, which
2120 instructs bonding to trust the driver to maintain carrier state.
2121
2122 As discussed in the options section, above, some drivers do
2123 not support the netif_carrier_on/_off link state tracking system.
2124 With use_carrier enabled, bonding will always see these links as up,
2125 regardless of their actual state.
2126
2127 Additionally, other drivers do support netif_carrier, but do
2128 not maintain it in real time, e.g., only polling the link state at
2129 some fixed interval. In this case, miimon will detect failures, but
2130 only after some long period of time has expired. If it appears that
2131 miimon is very slow in detecting link failures, try specifying
2132 use_carrier=0 to see if that improves the failure detection time. If
2133 it does, then it may be that the driver checks the carrier state at a
2134 fixed interval, but does not cache the MII register values (so the
2135 use_carrier=0 method of querying the registers directly works). If
2136 use_carrier=0 does not improve the failover, then the driver may cache
2137 the registers, or the problem may be elsewhere.
2138
2139 Also, remember that miimon only checks for the device's
2140 carrier state. It has no way to determine the state of devices on or
2141 beyond other ports of a switch, or if a switch is refusing to pass
2142 traffic while still maintaining carrier on.
2143
2144 9. SNMP agents
2145 ===============
2146
2147 If running SNMP agents, the bonding driver should be loaded
2148 before any network drivers participating in a bond. This requirement
2149 is due to the interface index (ipAdEntIfIndex) being associated to
2150 the first interface found with a given IP address. That is, there is
2151 only one ipAdEntIfIndex for each IP address. For example, if eth0 and
2152 eth1 are slaves of bond0 and the driver for eth0 is loaded before the
2153 bonding driver, the interface for the IP address will be associated
2154 with the eth0 interface. This configuration is shown below, the IP
2155 address 192.168.1.1 has an interface index of 2 which indexes to eth0
2156 in the ifDescr table (ifDescr.2).
2157
2158 ::
2159
2160 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo
2161 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = eth0
2162 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth1
2163 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth2
2164 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth3
2165 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = bond0
2166 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 5
2167 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2
2168 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 4
2169 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1
2170
2171 This problem is avoided by loading the bonding driver before
2172 any network drivers participating in a bond. Below is an example of
2173 loading the bonding driver first, the IP address 192.168.1.1 is
2174 correctly associated with ifDescr.2.
2175
2176 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.1 = lo
2177 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.2 = bond0
2178 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.3 = eth0
2179 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.4 = eth1
2180 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.5 = eth2
2181 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifDescr.6 = eth3
2182 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.10.10.10 = 6
2183 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.1.1 = 2
2184 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.10.74.20.94 = 5
2185 ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1
2186
2187 While some distributions may not report the interface name in
2188 ifDescr, the association between the IP address and IfIndex remains
2189 and SNMP functions such as Interface_Scan_Next will report that
2190 association.
2191
2192 10. Promiscuous mode
2193 ====================
2194
2195 When running network monitoring tools, e.g., tcpdump, it is
2196 common to enable promiscuous mode on the device, so that all traffic
2197 is seen (instead of seeing only traffic destined for the local host).
2198 The bonding driver handles promiscuous mode changes to the bonding
2199 master device (e.g., bond0), and propagates the setting to the slave
2200 devices.
2201
2202 For the balance-rr, balance-xor, broadcast, and 802.3ad modes,
2203 the promiscuous mode setting is propagated to all slaves.
2204
2205 For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, the
2206 promiscuous mode setting is propagated only to the active slave.
2207
2208 For balance-tlb mode, the active slave is the slave currently
2209 receiving inbound traffic.
2210
2211 For balance-alb mode, the active slave is the slave used as a
2212 "primary." This slave is used for mode-specific control traffic, for
2213 sending to peers that are unassigned or if the load is unbalanced.
2214
2215 For the active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes, when
2216 the active slave changes (e.g., due to a link failure), the
2217 promiscuous setting will be propagated to the new active slave.
2218
2219 11. Configuring Bonding for High Availability
2220 =============================================
2221
2222 High Availability refers to configurations that provide
2223 maximum network availability by having redundant or backup devices,
2224 links or switches between the host and the rest of the world. The
2225 goal is to provide the maximum availability of network connectivity
2226 (i.e., the network always works), even though other configurations
2227 could provide higher throughput.
2228
2229 11.1 High Availability in a Single Switch Topology
2230 --------------------------------------------------
2231
2232 If two hosts (or a host and a single switch) are directly
2233 connected via multiple physical links, then there is no availability
2234 penalty to optimizing for maximum bandwidth. In this case, there is
2235 only one switch (or peer), so if it fails, there is no alternative
2236 access to fail over to. Additionally, the bonding load balance modes
2237 support link monitoring of their members, so if individual links fail,
2238 the load will be rebalanced across the remaining devices.
2239
2240 See Section 12, "Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput"
2241 for information on configuring bonding with one peer device.
2242
2243 11.2 High Availability in a Multiple Switch Topology
2244 ----------------------------------------------------
2245
2246 With multiple switches, the configuration of bonding and the
2247 network changes dramatically. In multiple switch topologies, there is
2248 a trade off between network availability and usable bandwidth.
2249
2250 Below is a sample network, configured to maximize the
2251 availability of the network::
2252
2253 | |
2254 |port3 port3|
2255 +-----+----+ +-----+----+
2256 | |port2 ISL port2| |
2257 | switch A +--------------------------+ switch B |
2258 | | | |
2259 +-----+----+ +-----++---+
2260 |port1 port1|
2261 | +-------+ |
2262 +-------------+ host1 +---------------+
2263 eth0 +-------+ eth1
2264
2265 In this configuration, there is a link between the two
2266 switches (ISL, or inter switch link), and multiple ports connecting to
2267 the outside world ("port3" on each switch). There is no technical
2268 reason that this could not be extended to a third switch.
2269
2270 11.2.1 HA Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2271 -------------------------------------------------------------
2272
2273 In a topology such as the example above, the active-backup and
2274 broadcast modes are the only useful bonding modes when optimizing for
2275 availability; the other modes require all links to terminate on the
2276 same peer for them to behave rationally.
2277
2278 active-backup:
2279 This is generally the preferred mode, particularly if
2280 the switches have an ISL and play together well. If the
2281 network configuration is such that one switch is specifically
2282 a backup switch (e.g., has lower capacity, higher cost, etc),
2283 then the primary option can be used to insure that the
2284 preferred link is always used when it is available.
2285
2286 broadcast:
2287 This mode is really a special purpose mode, and is suitable
2288 only for very specific needs. For example, if the two
2289 switches are not connected (no ISL), and the networks beyond
2290 them are totally independent. In this case, if it is
2291 necessary for some specific one-way traffic to reach both
2292 independent networks, then the broadcast mode may be suitable.
2293
2294 11.2.2 HA Link Monitoring Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2295 ----------------------------------------------------------------
2296
2297 The choice of link monitoring ultimately depends upon your
2298 switch. If the switch can reliably fail ports in response to other
2299 failures, then either the MII or ARP monitors should work. For
2300 example, in the above example, if the "port3" link fails at the remote
2301 end, the MII monitor has no direct means to detect this. The ARP
2302 monitor could be configured with a target at the remote end of port3,
2303 thus detecting that failure without switch support.
2304
2305 In general, however, in a multiple switch topology, the ARP
2306 monitor can provide a higher level of reliability in detecting end to
2307 end connectivity failures (which may be caused by the failure of any
2308 individual component to pass traffic for any reason). Additionally,
2309 the ARP monitor should be configured with multiple targets (at least
2310 one for each switch in the network). This will insure that,
2311 regardless of which switch is active, the ARP monitor has a suitable
2312 target to query.
2313
2314 Note, also, that of late many switches now support a functionality
2315 generally referred to as "trunk failover." This is a feature of the
2316 switch that causes the link state of a particular switch port to be set
2317 down (or up) when the state of another switch port goes down (or up).
2318 Its purpose is to propagate link failures from logically "exterior" ports
2319 to the logically "interior" ports that bonding is able to monitor via
2320 miimon. Availability and configuration for trunk failover varies by
2321 switch, but this can be a viable alternative to the ARP monitor when using
2322 suitable switches.
2323
2324 12. Configuring Bonding for Maximum Throughput
2325 ==============================================
2326
2327 12.1 Maximizing Throughput in a Single Switch Topology
2328 ------------------------------------------------------
2329
2330 In a single switch configuration, the best method to maximize
2331 throughput depends upon the application and network environment. The
2332 various load balancing modes each have strengths and weaknesses in
2333 different environments, as detailed below.
2334
2335 For this discussion, we will break down the topologies into
2336 two categories. Depending upon the destination of most traffic, we
2337 categorize them into either "gatewayed" or "local" configurations.
2338
2339 In a gatewayed configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily
2340 as a router, and the majority of traffic passes through this router to
2341 other networks. An example would be the following::
2342
2343
2344 +----------+ +----------+
2345 | |eth0 port1| | to other networks
2346 | Host A +---------------------+ router +------------------->
2347 | +---------------------+ | Hosts B and C are out
2348 | |eth1 port2| | here somewhere
2349 +----------+ +----------+
2350
2351 The router may be a dedicated router device, or another host
2352 acting as a gateway. For our discussion, the important point is that
2353 the majority of traffic from Host A will pass through the router to
2354 some other network before reaching its final destination.
2355
2356 In a gatewayed network configuration, although Host A may
2357 communicate with many other systems, all of its traffic will be sent
2358 and received via one other peer on the local network, the router.
2359
2360 Note that the case of two systems connected directly via
2361 multiple physical links is, for purposes of configuring bonding, the
2362 same as a gatewayed configuration. In that case, it happens that all
2363 traffic is destined for the "gateway" itself, not some other network
2364 beyond the gateway.
2365
2366 In a local configuration, the "switch" is acting primarily as
2367 a switch, and the majority of traffic passes through this switch to
2368 reach other stations on the same network. An example would be the
2369 following::
2370
2371 +----------+ +----------+ +--------+
2372 | |eth0 port1| +-------+ Host B |
2373 | Host A +------------+ switch |port3 +--------+
2374 | +------------+ | +--------+
2375 | |eth1 port2| +------------------+ Host C |
2376 +----------+ +----------+port4 +--------+
2377
2378
2379 Again, the switch may be a dedicated switch device, or another
2380 host acting as a gateway. For our discussion, the important point is
2381 that the majority of traffic from Host A is destined for other hosts
2382 on the same local network (Hosts B and C in the above example).
2383
2384 In summary, in a gatewayed configuration, traffic to and from
2385 the bonded device will be to the same MAC level peer on the network
2386 (the gateway itself, i.e., the router), regardless of its final
2387 destination. In a local configuration, traffic flows directly to and
2388 from the final destinations, thus, each destination (Host B, Host C)
2389 will be addressed directly by their individual MAC addresses.
2390
2391 This distinction between a gatewayed and a local network
2392 configuration is important because many of the load balancing modes
2393 available use the MAC addresses of the local network source and
2394 destination to make load balancing decisions. The behavior of each
2395 mode is described below.
2396
2397
2398 12.1.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Single Switch Topology
2399 -----------------------------------------------------------
2400
2401 This configuration is the easiest to set up and to understand,
2402 although you will have to decide which bonding mode best suits your
2403 needs. The trade offs for each mode are detailed below:
2404
2405 balance-rr:
2406 This mode is the only mode that will permit a single
2407 TCP/IP connection to stripe traffic across multiple
2408 interfaces. It is therefore the only mode that will allow a
2409 single TCP/IP stream to utilize more than one interface's
2410 worth of throughput. This comes at a cost, however: the
2411 striping generally results in peer systems receiving packets out
2412 of order, causing TCP/IP's congestion control system to kick
2413 in, often by retransmitting segments.
2414
2415 It is possible to adjust TCP/IP's congestion limits by
2416 altering the net.ipv4.tcp_reordering sysctl parameter. The
2417 usual default value is 3. But keep in mind TCP stack is able
2418 to automatically increase this when it detects reorders.
2419
2420 Note that the fraction of packets that will be delivered out of
2421 order is highly variable, and is unlikely to be zero. The level
2422 of reordering depends upon a variety of factors, including the
2423 networking interfaces, the switch, and the topology of the
2424 configuration. Speaking in general terms, higher speed network
2425 cards produce more reordering (due to factors such as packet
2426 coalescing), and a "many to many" topology will reorder at a
2427 higher rate than a "many slow to one fast" configuration.
2428
2429 Many switches do not support any modes that stripe traffic
2430 (instead choosing a port based upon IP or MAC level addresses);
2431 for those devices, traffic for a particular connection flowing
2432 through the switch to a balance-rr bond will not utilize greater
2433 than one interface's worth of bandwidth.
2434
2435 If you are utilizing protocols other than TCP/IP, UDP for
2436 example, and your application can tolerate out of order
2437 delivery, then this mode can allow for single stream datagram
2438 performance that scales near linearly as interfaces are added
2439 to the bond.
2440
2441 This mode requires the switch to have the appropriate ports
2442 configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking."
2443
2444 active-backup:
2445 There is not much advantage in this network topology to
2446 the active-backup mode, as the inactive backup devices are all
2447 connected to the same peer as the primary. In this case, a
2448 load balancing mode (with link monitoring) will provide the
2449 same level of network availability, but with increased
2450 available bandwidth. On the plus side, active-backup mode
2451 does not require any configuration of the switch, so it may
2452 have value if the hardware available does not support any of
2453 the load balance modes.
2454
2455 balance-xor:
2456 This mode will limit traffic such that packets destined
2457 for specific peers will always be sent over the same
2458 interface. Since the destination is determined by the MAC
2459 addresses involved, this mode works best in a "local" network
2460 configuration (as described above), with destinations all on
2461 the same local network. This mode is likely to be suboptimal
2462 if all your traffic is passed through a single router (i.e., a
2463 "gatewayed" network configuration, as described above).
2464
2465 As with balance-rr, the switch ports need to be configured for
2466 "etherchannel" or "trunking."
2467
2468 broadcast:
2469 Like active-backup, there is not much advantage to this
2470 mode in this type of network topology.
2471
2472 802.3ad:
2473 This mode can be a good choice for this type of network
2474 topology. The 802.3ad mode is an IEEE standard, so all peers
2475 that implement 802.3ad should interoperate well. The 802.3ad
2476 protocol includes automatic configuration of the aggregates,
2477 so minimal manual configuration of the switch is needed
2478 (typically only to designate that some set of devices is
2479 available for 802.3ad). The 802.3ad standard also mandates
2480 that frames be delivered in order (within certain limits), so
2481 in general single connections will not see misordering of
2482 packets. The 802.3ad mode does have some drawbacks: the
2483 standard mandates that all devices in the aggregate operate at
2484 the same speed and duplex. Also, as with all bonding load
2485 balance modes other than balance-rr, no single connection will
2486 be able to utilize more than a single interface's worth of
2487 bandwidth.
2488
2489 Additionally, the linux bonding 802.3ad implementation
2490 distributes traffic by peer (using an XOR of MAC addresses
2491 and packet type ID), so in a "gatewayed" configuration, all
2492 outgoing traffic will generally use the same device. Incoming
2493 traffic may also end up on a single device, but that is
2494 dependent upon the balancing policy of the peer's 802.3ad
2495 implementation. In a "local" configuration, traffic will be
2496 distributed across the devices in the bond.
2497
2498 Finally, the 802.3ad mode mandates the use of the MII monitor,
2499 therefore, the ARP monitor is not available in this mode.
2500
2501 balance-tlb:
2502 The balance-tlb mode balances outgoing traffic by peer.
2503 Since the balancing is done according to MAC address, in a
2504 "gatewayed" configuration (as described above), this mode will
2505 send all traffic across a single device. However, in a
2506 "local" network configuration, this mode balances multiple
2507 local network peers across devices in a vaguely intelligent
2508 manner (not a simple XOR as in balance-xor or 802.3ad mode),
2509 so that mathematically unlucky MAC addresses (i.e., ones that
2510 XOR to the same value) will not all "bunch up" on a single
2511 interface.
2512
2513 Unlike 802.3ad, interfaces may be of differing speeds, and no
2514 special switch configuration is required. On the down side,
2515 in this mode all incoming traffic arrives over a single
2516 interface, this mode requires certain ethtool support in the
2517 network device driver of the slave interfaces, and the ARP
2518 monitor is not available.
2519
2520 balance-alb:
2521 This mode is everything that balance-tlb is, and more.
2522 It has all of the features (and restrictions) of balance-tlb,
2523 and will also balance incoming traffic from local network
2524 peers (as described in the Bonding Module Options section,
2525 above).
2526
2527 The only additional down side to this mode is that the network
2528 device driver must support changing the hardware address while
2529 the device is open.
2530
2531 12.1.2 MT Link Monitoring for Single Switch Topology
2532 ----------------------------------------------------
2533
2534 The choice of link monitoring may largely depend upon which
2535 mode you choose to use. The more advanced load balancing modes do not
2536 support the use of the ARP monitor, and are thus restricted to using
2537 the MII monitor (which does not provide as high a level of end to end
2538 assurance as the ARP monitor).
2539
2540 12.2 Maximum Throughput in a Multiple Switch Topology
2541 -----------------------------------------------------
2542
2543 Multiple switches may be utilized to optimize for throughput
2544 when they are configured in parallel as part of an isolated network
2545 between two or more systems, for example::
2546
2547 +-----------+
2548 | Host A |
2549 +-+---+---+-+
2550 | | |
2551 +--------+ | +---------+
2552 | | |
2553 +------+---+ +-----+----+ +-----+----+
2554 | Switch A | | Switch B | | Switch C |
2555 +------+---+ +-----+----+ +-----+----+
2556 | | |
2557 +--------+ | +---------+
2558 | | |
2559 +-+---+---+-+
2560 | Host B |
2561 +-----------+
2562
2563 In this configuration, the switches are isolated from one
2564 another. One reason to employ a topology such as this is for an
2565 isolated network with many hosts (a cluster configured for high
2566 performance, for example), using multiple smaller switches can be more
2567 cost effective than a single larger switch, e.g., on a network with 24
2568 hosts, three 24 port switches can be significantly less expensive than
2569 a single 72 port switch.
2570
2571 If access beyond the network is required, an individual host
2572 can be equipped with an additional network device connected to an
2573 external network; this host then additionally acts as a gateway.
2574
2575 12.2.1 MT Bonding Mode Selection for Multiple Switch Topology
2576 -------------------------------------------------------------
2577
2578 In actual practice, the bonding mode typically employed in
2579 configurations of this type is balance-rr. Historically, in this
2580 network configuration, the usual caveats about out of order packet
2581 delivery are mitigated by the use of network adapters that do not do
2582 any kind of packet coalescing (via the use of NAPI, or because the
2583 device itself does not generate interrupts until some number of
2584 packets has arrived). When employed in this fashion, the balance-rr
2585 mode allows individual connections between two hosts to effectively
2586 utilize greater than one interface's bandwidth.
2587
2588 12.2.2 MT Link Monitoring for Multiple Switch Topology
2589 ------------------------------------------------------
2590
2591 Again, in actual practice, the MII monitor is most often used
2592 in this configuration, as performance is given preference over
2593 availability. The ARP monitor will function in this topology, but its
2594 advantages over the MII monitor are mitigated by the volume of probes
2595 needed as the number of systems involved grows (remember that each
2596 host in the network is configured with bonding).
2597
2598 13. Switch Behavior Issues
2599 ==========================
2600
2601 13.1 Link Establishment and Failover Delays
2602 -------------------------------------------
2603
2604 Some switches exhibit undesirable behavior with regard to the
2605 timing of link up and down reporting by the switch.
2606
2607 First, when a link comes up, some switches may indicate that
2608 the link is up (carrier available), but not pass traffic over the
2609 interface for some period of time. This delay is typically due to
2610 some type of autonegotiation or routing protocol, but may also occur
2611 during switch initialization (e.g., during recovery after a switch
2612 failure). If you find this to be a problem, specify an appropriate
2613 value to the updelay bonding module option to delay the use of the
2614 relevant interface(s).
2615
2616 Second, some switches may "bounce" the link state one or more
2617 times while a link is changing state. This occurs most commonly while
2618 the switch is initializing. Again, an appropriate updelay value may
2619 help.
2620
2621 Note that when a bonding interface has no active links, the
2622 driver will immediately reuse the first link that goes up, even if the
2623 updelay parameter has been specified (the updelay is ignored in this
2624 case). If there are slave interfaces waiting for the updelay timeout
2625 to expire, the interface that first went into that state will be
2626 immediately reused. This reduces down time of the network if the
2627 value of updelay has been overestimated, and since this occurs only in
2628 cases with no connectivity, there is no additional penalty for
2629 ignoring the updelay.
2630
2631 In addition to the concerns about switch timings, if your
2632 switches take a long time to go into backup mode, it may be desirable
2633 to not activate a backup interface immediately after a link goes down.
2634 Failover may be delayed via the downdelay bonding module option.
2635
2636 13.2 Duplicated Incoming Packets
2637 --------------------------------
2638
2639 NOTE: Starting with version 3.0.2, the bonding driver has logic to
2640 suppress duplicate packets, which should largely eliminate this problem.
2641 The following description is kept for reference.
2642
2643 It is not uncommon to observe a short burst of duplicated
2644 traffic when the bonding device is first used, or after it has been
2645 idle for some period of time. This is most easily observed by issuing
2646 a "ping" to some other host on the network, and noticing that the
2647 output from ping flags duplicates (typically one per slave).
2648
2649 For example, on a bond in active-backup mode with five slaves
2650 all connected to one switch, the output may appear as follows::
2651
2652 # ping -n 10.0.4.2
2653 PING 10.0.4.2 (10.0.4.2) from 10.0.3.10 : 56(84) bytes of data.
2654 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.7 ms
2655 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2656 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2657 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2658 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=13.8 ms (DUP!)
2659 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.216 ms
2660 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.267 ms
2661 64 bytes from 10.0.4.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.222 ms
2662
2663 This is not due to an error in the bonding driver, rather, it
2664 is a side effect of how many switches update their MAC forwarding
2665 tables. Initially, the switch does not associate the MAC address in
2666 the packet with a particular switch port, and so it may send the
2667 traffic to all ports until its MAC forwarding table is updated. Since
2668 the interfaces attached to the bond may occupy multiple ports on a
2669 single switch, when the switch (temporarily) floods the traffic to all
2670 ports, the bond device receives multiple copies of the same packet
2671 (one per slave device).
2672
2673 The duplicated packet behavior is switch dependent, some
2674 switches exhibit this, and some do not. On switches that display this
2675 behavior, it can be induced by clearing the MAC forwarding table (on
2676 most Cisco switches, the privileged command "clear mac address-table
2677 dynamic" will accomplish this).
2678
2679 14. Hardware Specific Considerations
2680 ====================================
2681
2682 This section contains additional information for configuring
2683 bonding on specific hardware platforms, or for interfacing bonding
2684 with particular switches or other devices.
2685
2686 14.1 IBM BladeCenter
2687 --------------------
2688
2689 This applies to the JS20 and similar systems.
2690
2691 On the JS20 blades, the bonding driver supports only
2692 balance-rr, active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes. This is
2693 largely due to the network topology inside the BladeCenter, detailed
2694 below.
2695
2696 JS20 network adapter information
2697 --------------------------------
2698
2699 All JS20s come with two Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet ports
2700 integrated on the planar (that's "motherboard" in IBM-speak). In the
2701 BladeCenter chassis, the eth0 port of all JS20 blades is hard wired to
2702 I/O Module #1; similarly, all eth1 ports are wired to I/O Module #2.
2703 An add-on Broadcom daughter card can be installed on a JS20 to provide
2704 two more Gigabit Ethernet ports. These ports, eth2 and eth3, are
2705 wired to I/O Modules 3 and 4, respectively.
2706
2707 Each I/O Module may contain either a switch or a passthrough
2708 module (which allows ports to be directly connected to an external
2709 switch). Some bonding modes require a specific BladeCenter internal
2710 network topology in order to function; these are detailed below.
2711
2712 Additional BladeCenter-specific networking information can be
2713 found in two IBM Redbooks (www.ibm.com/redbooks):
2714
2715 - "IBM eServer BladeCenter Networking Options"
2716 - "IBM eServer BladeCenter Layer 2-7 Network Switching"
2717
2718 BladeCenter networking configuration
2719 ------------------------------------
2720
2721 Because a BladeCenter can be configured in a very large number
2722 of ways, this discussion will be confined to describing basic
2723 configurations.
2724
2725 Normally, Ethernet Switch Modules (ESMs) are used in I/O
2726 modules 1 and 2. In this configuration, the eth0 and eth1 ports of a
2727 JS20 will be connected to different internal switches (in the
2728 respective I/O modules).
2729
2730 A passthrough module (OPM or CPM, optical or copper,
2731 passthrough module) connects the I/O module directly to an external
2732 switch. By using PMs in I/O module #1 and #2, the eth0 and eth1
2733 interfaces of a JS20 can be redirected to the outside world and
2734 connected to a common external switch.
2735
2736 Depending upon the mix of ESMs and PMs, the network will
2737 appear to bonding as either a single switch topology (all PMs) or as a
2738 multiple switch topology (one or more ESMs, zero or more PMs). It is
2739 also possible to connect ESMs together, resulting in a configuration
2740 much like the example in "High Availability in a Multiple Switch
2741 Topology," above.
2742
2743 Requirements for specific modes
2744 -------------------------------
2745
2746 The balance-rr mode requires the use of passthrough modules
2747 for devices in the bond, all connected to an common external switch.
2748 That switch must be configured for "etherchannel" or "trunking" on the
2749 appropriate ports, as is usual for balance-rr.
2750
2751 The balance-alb and balance-tlb modes will function with
2752 either switch modules or passthrough modules (or a mix). The only
2753 specific requirement for these modes is that all network interfaces
2754 must be able to reach all destinations for traffic sent over the
2755 bonding device (i.e., the network must converge at some point outside
2756 the BladeCenter).
2757
2758 The active-backup mode has no additional requirements.
2759
2760 Link monitoring issues
2761 ----------------------
2762
2763 When an Ethernet Switch Module is in place, only the ARP
2764 monitor will reliably detect link loss to an external switch. This is
2765 nothing unusual, but examination of the BladeCenter cabinet would
2766 suggest that the "external" network ports are the ethernet ports for
2767 the system, when it fact there is a switch between these "external"
2768 ports and the devices on the JS20 system itself. The MII monitor is
2769 only able to detect link failures between the ESM and the JS20 system.
2770
2771 When a passthrough module is in place, the MII monitor does
2772 detect failures to the "external" port, which is then directly
2773 connected to the JS20 system.
2774
2775 Other concerns
2776 --------------
2777
2778 The Serial Over LAN (SoL) link is established over the primary
2779 ethernet (eth0) only, therefore, any loss of link to eth0 will result
2780 in losing your SoL connection. It will not fail over with other
2781 network traffic, as the SoL system is beyond the control of the
2782 bonding driver.
2783
2784 It may be desirable to disable spanning tree on the switch
2785 (either the internal Ethernet Switch Module, or an external switch) to
2786 avoid fail-over delay issues when using bonding.
2787
2788
2789 15. Frequently Asked Questions
2790 ==============================
2791
2792 1. Is it SMP safe?
2793 -------------------
2794
2795 Yes. The old 2.0.xx channel bonding patch was not SMP safe.
2796 The new driver was designed to be SMP safe from the start.
2797
2798 2. What type of cards will work with it?
2799 -----------------------------------------
2800
2801 Any Ethernet type cards (you can even mix cards - a Intel
2802 EtherExpress PRO/100 and a 3com 3c905b, for example). For most modes,
2803 devices need not be of the same speed.
2804
2805 Starting with version 3.2.1, bonding also supports Infiniband
2806 slaves in active-backup mode.
2807
2808 3. How many bonding devices can I have?
2809 ----------------------------------------
2810
2811 There is no limit.
2812
2813 4. How many slaves can a bonding device have?
2814 ----------------------------------------------
2815
2816 This is limited only by the number of network interfaces Linux
2817 supports and/or the number of network cards you can place in your
2818 system.
2819
2820 5. What happens when a slave link dies?
2821 ----------------------------------------
2822
2823 If link monitoring is enabled, then the failing device will be
2824 disabled. The active-backup mode will fail over to a backup link, and
2825 other modes will ignore the failed link. The link will continue to be
2826 monitored, and should it recover, it will rejoin the bond (in whatever
2827 manner is appropriate for the mode). See the sections on High
2828 Availability and the documentation for each mode for additional
2829 information.
2830
2831 Link monitoring can be enabled via either the miimon or
2832 arp_interval parameters (described in the module parameters section,
2833 above). In general, miimon monitors the carrier state as sensed by
2834 the underlying network device, and the arp monitor (arp_interval)
2835 monitors connectivity to another host on the local network.
2836
2837 If no link monitoring is configured, the bonding driver will
2838 be unable to detect link failures, and will assume that all links are
2839 always available. This will likely result in lost packets, and a
2840 resulting degradation of performance. The precise performance loss
2841 depends upon the bonding mode and network configuration.
2842
2843 6. Can bonding be used for High Availability?
2844 ----------------------------------------------
2845
2846 Yes. See the section on High Availability for details.
2847
2848 7. Which switches/systems does it work with?
2849 ---------------------------------------------
2850
2851 The full answer to this depends upon the desired mode.
2852
2853 In the basic balance modes (balance-rr and balance-xor), it
2854 works with any system that supports etherchannel (also called
2855 trunking). Most managed switches currently available have such
2856 support, and many unmanaged switches as well.
2857
2858 The advanced balance modes (balance-tlb and balance-alb) do
2859 not have special switch requirements, but do need device drivers that
2860 support specific features (described in the appropriate section under
2861 module parameters, above).
2862
2863 In 802.3ad mode, it works with systems that support IEEE
2864 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation. Most managed and many unmanaged
2865 switches currently available support 802.3ad.
2866
2867 The active-backup mode should work with any Layer-II switch.
2868
2869 8. Where does a bonding device get its MAC address from?
2870 ---------------------------------------------------------
2871
2872 When using slave devices that have fixed MAC addresses, or when
2873 the fail_over_mac option is enabled, the bonding device's MAC address is
2874 the MAC address of the active slave.
2875
2876 For other configurations, if not explicitly configured (with
2877 ifconfig or ip link), the MAC address of the bonding device is taken from
2878 its first slave device. This MAC address is then passed to all following
2879 slaves and remains persistent (even if the first slave is removed) until
2880 the bonding device is brought down or reconfigured.
2881
2882 If you wish to change the MAC address, you can set it with
2883 ifconfig or ip link::
2884
2885 # ifconfig bond0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
2886
2887 # ip link set bond0 address 66:77:88:99:aa:bb
2888
2889 The MAC address can be also changed by bringing down/up the
2890 device and then changing its slaves (or their order)::
2891
2892 # ifconfig bond0 down ; modprobe -r bonding
2893 # ifconfig bond0 .... up
2894 # ifenslave bond0 eth...
2895
2896 This method will automatically take the address from the next
2897 slave that is added.
2898
2899 To restore your slaves' MAC addresses, you need to detach them
2900 from the bond (``ifenslave -d bond0 eth0``). The bonding driver will
2901 then restore the MAC addresses that the slaves had before they were
2902 enslaved.
2903
2904 16. Resources and Links
2905 =======================
2906
2907 The latest version of the bonding driver can be found in the latest
2908 version of the linux kernel, found on http://kernel.org
2909
2910 The latest version of this document can be found in the latest kernel
2911 source (named Documentation/networking/bonding.rst).
2912
2913 Discussions regarding the development of the bonding driver take place
2914 on the main Linux network mailing list, hosted at vger.kernel.org. The list
2915 address is:
2916
2917 netdev@vger.kernel.org
2918
2919 The administrative interface (to subscribe or unsubscribe) can
2920 be found at:
2921
2922 http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#netdev