Re: NIC bonding on pSeries with dual VIOS

[Frank Fegert <fra.nospam.nk@gmx.de>]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 08:32:26AM +1100, Tony Breeds wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 11:40:03PM +0100, Frank Fegert wrote:
> If you uipgrade to a newer (sorry) kernel then you'll get a failover_mac option
> to the bonding driver.  This will allow you to specify that the MAC address for
> outbount packets should be the hardware MAC address.  Thsi will stop your
> network admains complaining ;P
> 
> However it will not work out of the box.  You'll also need to ensure that both
> underlying network devices are in promisicuous mode.  This shoudl give you the
> failover you want
> 
> Of course it may not be suitable in your environment.

Thanks for the hint, i'll read up on this.

> >  - 'balance-alb' would be an alternative, since it uses the MAC of
> >    the slave eth-interfaces instead of the one from the bonding inter-
> >    face. Unfortunately 'balance-alb' does not seem to be supported
> >    with the ibmveth driver.
> 
> Hmm can you provide some more details here?  I can't see a reason why this
> would be so?

Bonding interface config:
    auto bond3
    iface bond3 inet static
        address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
        netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
        network xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
        broadcast xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
        pre-up echo +bond3 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters
        pre-up echo balance-alb > /sys/class/net/bond3/bonding/mode
        pre-up echo 3000 > /sys/class/net/bond3/bonding/arp_interval
        pre-up echo "+xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" > /sys/class/net/bond3/bonding/arp_ip_target
        post-up echo +eth6 > /sys/class/net/bond3/bonding/slaves
        post-up echo +eth7 > /sys/class/net/bond3/bonding/slaves
        pre-down echo -eth6 > /sys/class/net/bond3/bonding/slaves
        pre-down echo -eth7 > /sys/class/net/bond3/bonding/slaves
        post-down echo -bond3 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters

Errors on 'ifup bond3':
    bonding: bond3 is being created...
    bonding: bond3: setting mode to balance-alb (6).
    bonding: bond3: Setting ARP monitoring interval to 3000.
    bonding: bond3: ARP monitoring has been set up, but no ARP targets have been specified.
    bonding: bond3: adding ARP target 172.25.123.210.
    bonding: bond3: Adding slave eth6.
    bonding: bond3: Error: dev_set_mac_address of dev eth6 failed! ALB mode requires that the base driver support setting the hw address also when the network device's interface is open
    bonding: bond3 is being deleted...

System:
    Linux ***** 2.6.26-1-powerpc64 #1 SMP Sat Jan 10 14:42:07 CET 2009 ppc64 GNU/Linux

The same config works - within the previously described limitations -
for active-backup and balance-rr.

> Not sure about your active-backup issuses, I've never used that mode.

:-(

Thanks & regards,

        Frank