Bond equivalent on OpenVMS

[eddouik]

Hi all,
there's an equivalent for bonding many ethernet cards on one virtual ehternet card.

BR.

[Ian Miller.]

Do you mean for failover purposes?

Two ethernet cards can be put into a failover set

[Jess Goodman]

Was that a question?

If you're asking if OpenVMS supports automatic failover if one ethernet card or circuit goes down, then it would depend on what ethernet protocols you are using.

For TCP/IP VMS has "fail-safe IP" which can automatically switch which interface is used for an IP address.

On OpenVMS ethernet is often also used for the SCS and DECnet protocols. SCS can be "live" simultaneously over mulitple interfaces and traffic can be controlled via a priority scheme. See the SCACP management tool. DECnet can also be configured for multiple lines and circuits.

[Richard Whalen]

If you are looking for the ability to use multiple ethernet cards as if they were one for both failover and load balancing, then you may want to look at MultiNet or TCPware from Process Software. Both of them support configuring multiple interfaces as a common link.

[Hoff]

One-line questions can be somewhat (and often surprisingly) difficult to target an answer; can you provide some details or some background on what you're trying to do here?

As for two potential alternatives, you can use an outboard network box (often a managed switch) that provides this capability. OpenVMS V8.3 has better capabilities here, within LANCP and its VLAN and LAN failover support.

As for software-based (in-board) networking solutions, the two underpinnings most commonly used here for in-board processing are called "LAN Failover" and "failSAFE IP".

I'm not immediately aware of an in-board means to implement channel bonding or link ganging or such on OpenVMS; of having active-active NICs under IP. This for reasons of aggregate network performance, which is one of the two usual reasons for looking at bonding NICs. (And why I asked for some background.)

Within HP products...

LAN Failover was first shipped in OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2.

FailSAFE IP was first available in TCP/IP Services V5.4.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs LLC

[labadie_1]

About Failsafe IP you have a great article in the Vms technical Journal V2
Configuring TCP/IP for High Availability
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/journal/v2/articles/tcpip.html

[Richard Stockdale]

This support isn't on the current roadmap (Link Aggregation or bonding), but it will be available on HPVM VMS guests as the underlying host driver on HP-UX supports APA at least on gigabit NICs, so you'll be able to define a guest 'NIC' that underneath is an aggregated set of NICs.

- Dick

[eddouik]

thanks for your response.
i have OpenVMS 7.3-2
i want to implement loadbalancing function between tow Ethernet Cards, actif/actif model not actif/passif model implemented by Failsafe.

in the failsafe case how can i adjust the timeout on failover event.

BRs.

[Paul Hansford]

Try looking at

"TCPIP$FAILSAFE" = "SYS$SYSDEVICE:[TCPIP$FSAFE]TCPIP$FAILSAFE.CONF"

The conf file is well commented and
Various timeouts can be configured, it they are blank they use predefined defaults

Info Poll : 3s
Warn Poll : 2s (1 retry)
Error Poll: 30s
Generate : mac

[Hoff]

//i want to implement loadbalancing function between tow Ethernet Cards, actif/actif model not actif/passif model implemented by Failsafe.//

You can't do this with OpenVMS, as neither FailSAFE IP nor LAN Failover provide this. There is no active/active support available from HP. (Mr. Stockdale works on LAN drivers for OpenVMS engineering.)

You might get somewhat further here with one of the third-party IP stacks, if your primary goal is ("just") active/active IP.