APA Configuration Question

[GlennBroSitel]

Group Capability what does this setting mean?

What I am trying to configure a APA setup using 4 nics in my RX-3600 with FEC_AUTO and I want them to be one big pipe.

[Patrice Le Guyader]

Hello,

You can fin this parameter in the file hp_apaportconf in /etc/rc.config.d. It define the name of your "pipe" as you say.
For example generaly 900 for lan900, the first default APA interface.

If you configure all your interface with 900 in this file as :

HP_APAPORT_INTERFACE_NAME[0]=lan0
HP_APAPORT_GROUP_CAPABILITY[0]=900
#
HP_APAPORT_INTERFACE_NAME[1]=lan1
HP_APAPORT_GROUP_CAPABILITY[1]=900
#
HP_APAPORT_INTERFACE_NAME[2]=lan2
HP_APAPORT_GROUP_CAPABILITY[2]=900
#
HP_APAPORT_INTERFACE_NAME[3]=lan3
HP_APAPORT_GROUP_CAPABILITY[3]=900

You'll find something like this in the otherconfiguration file : hp_apaconf

HP_APA_INTERFACE_NAME[0]=lan900
HP_APA_LOAD_BALANCE_MODE[0]=LB_MAC
HP_APA_HOT_STANDBY[0]=off
HP_APA_MANUAL_LA[0]="0,1,2,3"
HP_APA_GROUP_CAPABILITY[0]=900
HP_APA_USE_SYSLOG[0]=1

where HP_APA_MANUAL is the PPA id of your NICs. My example is not for your configuration in FEC_AUTO.

hope this Help.
Pat.

[rick jones]

Keep in mind that while at one level it will look like "one big pipe" at another it will happen to still be "four smaller sub-pipes." Specficially, the maximum throughput of any one "flow" will still be limited to the bandwidth of an individual link in the aggregate.

Depending on the flavor of packet scheduling you pick for APA (outbound traffic) and switch (inbound traffic) a "flow" is either all traffic between a pair of Ethernet/MAC addresses, all traffic between a pair of IP addresses or all traffic on a single TCP connection.

I think that most switches these days would prefer LACP to FEC.