10.3. Set Up a Bond Device
A Bond aggregates multiple NICs in a parallel manner to provide combined speed that is beyond single NIC speeds. Bonding provides increased fault tolerance by increasing the number of failures required for networking to fail completely. The NICs that form a bond device must be of the same make and model in order to ensure that both devices support the same options and modes.
The packet dispersal algorithm for a bond is determined by the bonding mode used.
Bonding Modes
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization supports the following common bonding modes:
(Mode 1) Active-backup policy sets all interfaces to the backup state while one remains active. Upon failure on the active interface, a backup interface replaces it as the only active interface in the bond. The MAC address of the bond in mode 1 is visible on only one port (the network adapter), to prevent confusion for the switch. Mode 1 provides fault tolerance and is supported in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
(Mode 2) XOR policy selects an interface to transmit packages to based on the result of a XOR operation on the source and destination MAC addresses multiplied by the modulo slave count. This calculation ensures that the same interface is selected for each destination MAC address used. Mode 2 provides fault tolerance and load balancing and is supported in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
(Mode 4) IEEE 802.3ad policy creates aggregation groups for which included interfaces share the speed and duplex settings. Mode 4 uses all interfaces in the active aggregation group in accordance with the IEEE 802.3ad specification and is supported in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
(Mode 5) Adaptive transmit load balancing policy ensures the outgoing traffic distribution is according to the load on each interface and that the current interface receives all incoming traffic. If the interface assigned to receive traffic fails, another interface is assigned the receiving role instead. Mode 5 is supported in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
To create a bond device using the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager administration portal
Click the Hosts tab.
Select the host for which a bond device will be created.
Click the Network Interfaces tab in the details pane.
Select the devices that will be included in the bond, ensuring they are all of the same make and model.
Click the Bond button. The Bond Network Interfaces dialog displays.
Enter the configuration information for the new bond device including:
Bond Name: select one from the drop down list.
Network: the logical network that the bond device will be a part of.
Bonding mode: the bonding mode that provides the desired functionality.
IP address assignment mechanism: either DHCP or Static. If static, then IP, Subnet Mask, and Default Gateway must all be set manually.
Check connectivity: ensure that the bond device is functional upon creation.
Save Network Configuration: make the bond device persistent through reboots.
Click the OK. The Events tab displays Bond device created.
A bond device is listed in the Network Interfaces tab of the details pain for the selected host
Bonding must be enabled for the ports that the host uses on the switch it is connected to. The process by which bonding is enabled is slightly different for each switch, consult the manual provided by your switch vendor for detailed information on how to enable bonding.
The following is an bond example configuration for a switch. Your switch configuration may look different.
interface Port-channel11
switchport access vlan 153
switchport mode access
spanning-tree portfast disable
spanning-tree bpduguard disable
spanning-tree guard root
interface GigabitEthernet0/16
switchport access vlan 153
switchport mode access
channel-group 11 mode active
interface GigabitEthernet0/17
switchport access vlan 153
switchport mode access
For every type of switch it is important to set up the switch bonding with the
Link Aggregation Control Protocol(
LACP) protocol and
not the Cisco
Port Aggregation Protocol(
PAgP) protocol.