openVMS & Teaming NIC?

[Marco Paccapeli]

hi to everyones,

it's possible to team two nic in a openVMS 7.3 or 7.2-1? If the answer is YES, which NIC is supported on a es40 model 1 to do this?

thanks, marco

[Volker Halle]

Marro,

this feature is called LAN Failover and is available in OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2 (or higher) or OpenVMS I64.

All NICs available for an ES40 should be supported by LAN Failover.

Volker.

[Marco Paccapeli]

ok, so older version haven't this feature.

thanks

[Andy Bustamante]

Just to clarify, LAN Failover create a logical network interface from one or more physical devices. The configuration is active/stand by. See the System Manager's Man vol 2 for the NICs supported. (DE-600x and all gig ethernet cards off the top of my head). The update 6.0 eco adds support for the DE-500s.

Another option is to assign multiple IP addresses to multiple NICs for increased band width. You can also use failSAFE IP to support fail over, allowing the addresses to migrate when a NIC fails.

If two interfaces are configured in the same subnet, it appears the TCPIP will alternate transmitting packets between the two.

Andy

[VMSRox]

"If two interfaces are configured in the same subnet, it appears the TCPIP will alternate transmitting packets between the two."

Andy - does this only work if you have Failsafe enabled? I've got multiple NICs configured with seperate IP's in the same subnet, but it seems that regardless of which NIC receives requests, all outgoing traffic is sent over the primary NIC. Granted, only the primary NIC is designated as the default route. Can I have more than one NIC configured as the default route?

[Andy Bustamante]

You can only have one NIC with a default route.

I should have said that traffic local to the subnet seems alternate between multiple NICs. Traffic going to another network is forwarded to the appropriate gateway over the NIC with the appropriate route.

Andy

[Volker Halle]

VMSRox,

starting with TCPIP V5.1, there is a connection-based load-balancing for OUTGOING connections, if you have multiple interfaces into the same subnet.

You can 'see' this behaviour when using DECnet-over-IP and DECnet proxies on the remote system based on the IP names of the interfaces of the source node. Sometimes DECnet proxy access will work, sometimes it won't. Looking closer will show, that the IP source address will alternate between the multiple interfaces on the source system, so both IP names have to be entered in the DECnet proxy database.

Volker.