Auto Port Aggregation

[DA2072]

I'm trying to set up the auto port aggregation on the Itanium server. I've got two ports, Lan0 and Lan1 which will be used as part of the aggregate. If I have Lan0 going to one Cisco switch and lan2 going to another Cisco switch, would I use the FEC_Auto and how do I set it up in the Auto Port aggregation. When would I use the LAN Monitor?

[James George_1]

Hi

Here is a document that explains how to set up APA.

rgds/ James

[DA2072]

I've got the doc already. Can APA be used in the Vpar? I'm getting an error message that the Protocol already logged on the port 0. Cannot add selected port 0 to lan900 in APA. I went to the sam utility and try to delete the port 0 but I'm not able to. I've also tried to ifconfig lan0 unplumb but fails. I've successfully down'ed the lan0.

[rick jones]

If you are splitting between switches, unless APA has added support for meshing, I think you have to use LAN monitor and have active/standby.

[Armin Kunaschik]

You can not use FEC_AUTO on different switches, because FEC_AUTO means link aggregation.
This needs to be configured on the switch too and is only possible on one physical switch.
Most of the time you would use manual configuration with 2 links and no hot standby. This will use both lans balanced for outgoing traffic.
LAN Monitor is used when you want to setup a hot standby interface, which is only used when the other fails.
The configuration can be done with SAM - see the already mentioned APA manual.


My 2 cents,
Armin

PS: Assign points if you find answers useful!

[Tim Nelson]

FEC_AUTO(PaGP) can be used to aggregate between two switches with the following. 1) switches must be stacked. 2) switches must support the option ( i.e. 3509 switches can do this. We also tested LACP.

One note. The above configurate was tested and we ran into isssues during boot that the aggregate would not form due to some time-out/delays during boot. We ultimately went to MANUAL (FEC) and all works well, with FEC you loose the management protocals ( i.e. no syslog or nettl entries when you loose a leg in the aggregate ).


If anyone has different experience please post as I will then reinvestigate.

[Tim Nelson]

FEC_AUTO(PaGP) can be used to aggregate between two switches with the following. 1) switches must be stacked. 2) switches must support the option ( i.e. 3509 switches can do this. We also tested LACP.

One note. The above configurate was tested and we ran into isssues during boot that the aggregate would not form due to some time-out/delays during boot. We ultimately went to MANUAL (FEC) and all works well, with FEC you loose the management protocals ( i.e. no syslog or nettl entries when you loose a leg in the aggregate ).

Another Note: The NICs used must be able to support the same speed and duplex settings. i.e. cannot use a 10MB card and 100MB card set to auto as the switch will not allow the aggregate creation.

If anyone has different experience please post as I will then reinvestigate / revise my stand.

[Jim Keeble]

If IP is not using lan0 (lan0 would not show up at all in netstat -in in that case), then there are a couple of other things that might be using it. 1) Check to see if if a program called rbootd is running. Kill it and try again if it is. 2) It could already be running one of the APA protocols. Try "lanadmin -X -c 0".

If IP is on the port and "ifconfig lan0 unplumb" doesn't work, what exactly is the command and error message you used ?

As for using 2 different switches for a load balancing aggregate, there are a couple of possibilities, but they really depend on the capabilities of the network eqipment, not on the HP software. 1) Cisco has a technology called "Stackwise" that allows stackable switches to be merged into a single backplane for redundancy. 2) Nortel has something similar called "SMLT" that has been tested with APA.

Otherwise, you should use Lan Monitor .