Teaming network adapter hpux 11.23

[WilliamSmith11]

Hi
I have a customer that is going to install a cluster using two rx6600 and oracle rac 10g.

The customer have five network adapter on each server, two of them are going to be used as heart bit.

He wants to use two adapter in teaming like is done in windows , I have read some about that and find out that with Auto-Port Aggregation is possible.

I do the swlist command to see the installed product and I saw the J4240AA.

The Oracle team askme that "in whitch mode are you going to configure the teaming mode" some body have got experience with that.

I am also reading the J4240-90046 manual, but no experience about witch will be the best choise.


Regards and merry christmas for everyboby

W.S

[Bill Hassell]

APA is a very capable product and works well for a large variety of configurations, from teaming (to increase throughput) to failover between LAN crads and/or switches. By far, the simplest is a peer-to-peer or crossover cable between the two machines. Now if a direct cable is not possible, then your switch will have to support APA which essentially means that two ports on the switch will have the same IP address. This capability is not found on most switches so you'll have to look at your switch specifications to use APA in this manner.

[Tim Nelson]

I have been using APA successfully for many years.

Two scenarios:

Single switch with aggregated/channel group of two or more NICs.

Two switches with aggregate/channel group of two or more NICS. The switches must be cascaded ( at least with models like 3750 or lower) else put the aggregate in hot-standby between two disparaging switches if bandwidth is not the concern.

The APA users guide is great for listing the requirements.

Setup is pretty simple as long as the network folks do their end right. (port-fast, correct channel group, correct vlan ).

I seem to remember the software to be about $1000 per license. I also seem to remember reading that the new bundles of 11iv3 have it included. Price it both ways.

[WilliamSmith11]

The customer have only one ethernet switch.
He wants that I use two nic of one server and make teaming, and that I do the same with the other server.

In case that a network adapter fail it will continue operation.

what do you thing about this configuration.

Point of failure will be present I know.


W.S

[Tim Nelson · Accepted solution]

This method works great with the benefit of some increased bandwidth. In the event of a NIC or port failure the other NIC(s) will keep on running. In the event of a complete switch failure, no go..

Simply aquire the APA software, configure the /etc/rc.config.d/hp_apaportconf file. NICs in same group and set for FEC_AUTO

In hp_apaconf configure the aggregate ( LAN900 ) for LB_MAC and same group number.

Configure the switch ports for port_fast, a channel group and vlan.

[Tim Nelson]

And just to be complete.

The working lan interface will be lan900.

edit /etc/rc.config.d/netconf to use lan900 instead of lan0,1 or 2. ( if these are active when you try to aggregate them it will fail. Need to unplumb when aggregating active interfaces. )

/sbin/init.d/hp_apa (start|stop)

lanscan -q to show aggregates

lanscan -v to show more detail.

[rick jones]

I will second or third the suggestion to read the APA documentation, which you should be able to find on docs.hp.com.

While the concept is called teaming in Windowsland, it is called bonding in Linuxland and Aggregation in HP-UXland... :)