Multiple bonding on RHEL 5.3

[Qcheck]

I am trying to bond two bonds like the following:

bondd ==> eth0, eth2
bondm ==> eth1, eth3

bondd for data management and bondm for management ports.

So what options do I have to setup in bondd, bondm and /etc/modprobe.conf

I tried the following and failed:

/etc/modprobe.conf
alias bondd bonding miimon=100 mode=0 \ max_bonds=2
alias bondm bonding miimon=100 mode=1 \ max_bonds=2

And bondd and bondm files like:
DEVICE=bond
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
USERCTL=no
TYPE=Ethernet

So any ideas are greatly appreciated. I am fairly new to bonding.

Thanks in an advance!

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

It is hard to give an opinion without knowing your objectives.

Yes, you will get two bonded interfaces from your configuration, but you don't define what kind of fail over or bonding you would like to have. /etc/modprobe.conf is not complete.

The point of network bonding is to either improve reliability or increase band width.

Intel cards and cards of the same speed generally bond better than a mix and match situation.

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/rhel5/rhel5_administration/rhel5_s1-modules-ethernet.html

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-bond-or-team-multiple-network-interfaces-nic-into-single-interface.html

If you use my ITRC profile to contact me, I can send you an example of intel NIC card bonding.

SEP

[Qcheck]

Steven,

I thought only /etc/modprobe.conf consists of the following:

alias bondd bonding miimon=100 mode=0 \ max_bonds=2
alias bondm bonding miimon=100 mode=1 \ max_bonds=2

All I need is, round-robin policy for fault tolerance. So please help me to what I need to include in modprobe.conf.

So eth0 & eth2 with bondd bonding and eth1 & eth3 on bondm.

[dirk dierickx]

the RH knowledge base entries are a great source of information for these kind of questions.

procedure to bond on RH4/5 is here:
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-7431

available bonding modes are described here:
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-16008

[Qcheck]

Never mind, I made it work with the following changes in modprobe.conf:

alias bond2 bonding
options bond2 miimon=100 mode=balance-alb max_bonds=2
alias bond3 bonding
options bond3 miimon=100 mode=balance-alb

But the question is bond0 and bond1 are reserved for infiniband bonding, we didn't implement them yet. So when we implement bond0 and bond1, do I need to change max_bonds=4 (right now without bond0 and bond1 I setup as max_bonds=2)? Also, even though i didn't configure why I am seeing bond0 and bond1(even though they r not up n running) when I do ifconfig -a?

[Qcheck]

Found the solution on myself. However, still I had few questions. Since no one is answering, I am closing the thread.

Thank you.