PHReeK.oRG

I wanted to enable LACP bonding on my HP MicroServer Gen8. This configuration allows load balancing and fault tolerance. When transferring data to the server it will only be received via 1 NIC meaning a 1Gbps limit per connection, but 2 connections can transfer at 1Gbps each. When receiving data it will load balance over both NICs meaning you can achieve up to 2Gbps on a single connection. This post will also work on RHEL 7.

NB: While making these changes you will need to be logged into the server from either the console or ILO as the network connection WILL go down.

1. Disable NetworkManager

   systemctl stop NetworkManager
   systemctl disable NetworkManager
   yum erase NetworkManager*

2. Take note of the names of your NICs and their MAC addresses

   ip link

   In my case they are called eno1 and eno2 so you will need to substitute your own values accordingly in the following steps.
3. Setup your switch ports as an LACP trunk. You'll need to consult your documentation on how to do that.
4. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/bond.conf

   alias bond0 bonding
   options bond0 miimon=100 mode=4 lacp_rate=1
   

5. Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno1

   DEVICE=eno1
   NM_CONTROLLED=no
   BOOTPROTO=none
   NAME=eno1
   ONBOOT=yes
   SLAVE=yes
   MASTER=bond0

6. Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno2

   DEVICE=eno2
   NM_CONTROLLED=no
   BOOTPROTO=none
   NAME=eno2
   ONBOOT=yes
   SLAVE=yes
   MASTER=bond0

7. Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0

   DEVICE=bond0
   NAME=bond0
   IPADDR=10.1.1.5
   NETMASK=255.255.255.0
   GATEWAY=10.1.1.1
   DNS1=10.1.1.1
   DNS2=10.1.1.2
   #IPV6INIT=yes
   ONBOOT=yes
   USERCTL=no
   

8. Restart your server so that the bonding module is loaded with the correct options during boot.
9. Check that the bond0 interface is up

   ip addr

   1: lo:  mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
       link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
       inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
          valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
       inet6 ::1/128 scope host
          valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
   2: eno1:  mtu 1500 qdisc mq master bond0 state UP qlen 1000
       link/ether a0:1d:48:c7:12:64 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
   3: eno2:  mtu 1500 qdisc mq master bond0 state UP qlen 1000
       link/ether a0:1d:48:c7:12:64 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
   4: bond0:  mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP
       link/ether a0:1d:48:c7:12:64 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
       inet 10.1.1.5/24 brd 10.1.1.255 scope global bond0
          valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
       inet6 fe80::a21d:48ff:fec7:1264/64 scope link
          valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
   

10. View the status of your bonded interfaces

    cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0

    Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.7.1 (April 27, 2011)
    
    Bonding Mode: IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation
    Transmit Hash Policy: layer2 (0)
    MII Status: up
    MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
    Up Delay (ms): 0
    Down Delay (ms): 0
    
    802.3ad info
    LACP rate: fast
    Min links: 0
    Aggregator selection policy (ad_select): stable
    Active Aggregator Info:
            Aggregator ID: 1
            Number of ports: 2
            Actor Key: 17
            Partner Key: 10
            Partner Mac Address: 88:51:fb:8d:3b:30
    
    Slave Interface: eno1
    MII Status: up
    Speed: 1000 Mbps
    Duplex: full
    Link Failure Count: 0
    Permanent HW addr: a0:1d:48:c7:12:64
    Aggregator ID: 1
    Slave queue ID: 0
    
    Slave Interface: eno2
    MII Status: up
    Speed: 1000 Mbps
    Duplex: full
    Link Failure Count: 0
    Permanent HW addr: a0:1d:48:c7:12:65
    Aggregator ID: 1
    Slave queue ID: 0