HP APA / MAC Address of a Link Aggregate

[Enrico Venturi]

Hello colleagues,
I knew that the MAC address of a HP APA Link Aggregate is determined by the Permanent MAC addresses of the first LAN Card added to the aggregate.
My question is:
does the MAC address of the Link aggregate change when a failover occur?
does it depend on the current active LAN card or it's "static" (it changes only if the first LAN card is removed from the aggregate) ?

thanks
Enrico

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Enrico,

Thats an excellent question and I think the best approach to finding it out is to test it.

Once a card is removed from the aggregate, the expected behavior would be for the MAC address to change to the next card in the group.

What will actually happen is quite interesting to me and perhaps others. Please schedule a test and let us know. I think the results may vary from version to version of APA.

SEP

[Enrico Venturi]

Amazing! ;-)

A forum where if someone puts a question he gets another question ;-)

[Enrico Venturi]

The test has been done, the result is that the Link Aggregate MAC addresses dynamically changes and it gets the value from the currently active LAN card permanent MAC address.

See the output of a continuous lanscan | grep LinkAgg0 performed while a unplug - plug of the LAN cable has been done:

....
LinkAgg0 0x00306E084FAB 900 UP lan900 snap900 7 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg0 0x00306E084FAB 900 UP lan900 snap900 7 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg0 0x00306E0C549D 900 UP lan900 snap900 7 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg0 0x00306E0C549D 900 UP lan900 snap900 7 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg0 0x00306E0C549D 900 UP lan900 snap900 7 ETHER Yes 119
...
LinkAgg0 0x00306E0C549D 900 UP lan900 snap900 7 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg0 0x00306E084FAB 900 UP lan900 snap900 7 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg0 0x00306E084FAB 900 UP lan900 snap900 7 ETHER Yes 119

The MAC changes as the failover occurs, then it's restored as the fail is recovered.

regards
Enrico

[Enrico Venturi]

Italy will win the world cup!

[marie-noelle jeanson_1]

Enrico,

Even though the thread has been closed, I want to point out that the answer was in the user doc:
if you look in the APA support guide, What happens during startup at http://docs.hp.com/en/J4240-90033/ch08s02.html , it says:

MAC Addresses for Link Aggregates


This section describes the process used to select unique MAC addresses for link aggregates.

The unique MAC address for a specific link aggregate is determined by using the permanent MAC address of the first physical port assigned to the link aggregate. If the first port is removed, the link aggregate's MAC address is updated with the permanent MAC address of the last port in the link aggregate.

When a physical port is removed from a link aggregate, its local MAC address is reset to the physical port's permanent MAC address.

That would have helped?

Marie.

[Enrico Venturi]

I really wonder since most of the people give an answer even if they didn't fully read the question!
my question was:
what happens in the Link Aggregate MAC address when a failover occurs?

It's like I asked:
what time is it?
and you answered:
It's raining ....

regards
Enrico