CREATING BONDING OR TEAMING IN LINUX

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There are almost six types of Channel Bond types are available. Here, we’ll review only two
type of Channel Bond which are popular and widely used.

Load balancing (Round-Robin) : Traffic is transmitted in sequential order or round-robin

fashion from both NIC. This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance.

​Active-Backup : Only one slave NIC is active at any given point of time. Other Interface Card
will be active only if the active slave NIC fails.​

Creating Ethernet Channel Bonding

We have two Network Ethernet Cards i.e eth1 and eth2 where bond0 will be created for
bonding purpose. Need superuser privileged to execute below commands.​

​Load Balancing (Round-Robin)

Configure eth1

Mention parameter MASTER bond0 and eth1 interface as a SLAVE in config file as shown
below.​

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​# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/

ifcfg-eth1​

​DEVICE="eth1"
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT="yes"
BOOTPROTO="none"
USERCTL=no
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

Configure eth2

Here also, specify parameter MASTER bond0 and eth2 interface as a SLAVE.​

​# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/

ifcfg-eth2​

DEVICE="eth2"
TYPE="Ethernet"
ONBOOT="yes"
USERCTL=no
#NM_CONTROLLED=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

Create bond0 Configuration

Create bond0 and configure Channel bonding interface in the “/etc/sysconfig/network-

scripts/” directory called ifcfg-bond0.

The following is a sample channel bonding configuration file.

# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0

DEVICE=bond0
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=192.168.246.130

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NETMASK=255.255.255.0
BONDING_OPTS="mode=0 miimon=100"

​In the above configuration we have chosen Bonding Options mode=0 i.e Round-Robin and
miimon=100 (Polling intervals 100 ms).

Let’s see interfaces created using ifconfig command which shows “bond0” running as the
MASTER both interfaces “eth1” and “eth2” running as SLAVES.​

# ifconfig

bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:57:61:8E

inet addr:192.168.246.130 Bcast:192.168.246.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe57:618e/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:17374 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:16060 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1231555 (1.1 MiB) TX bytes:1622391 (1.5 MiB)

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:57:61:8E

UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:16989 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8072 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1196931 (1.1 MiB) TX bytes:819042 (799.8 KiB)
Interrupt:19 Base address:0x2000

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:57:61:8E

UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:385 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:7989 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:34624 (33.8 KiB) TX bytes:803583 (784.7 KiB)
Interrupt:19 Base address:0x2080

lo Link encap:Local Loopback

inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
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 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:480 (480.0 b) TX bytes:480 (480.0 b)

​Restart Network service and interfaces should be OK.

# service network restart​

​Shutting down interface bond0: [ OK ]

Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface bond0: [ OK ]​

​Checking the status of the bond.​

# watch -n .1

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0​

Sample Output

Below output shows that Bonding Mode is Load Balancing (RR) and eth1 & eth2 are
showing up.​

Every 0.1s: cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0 Mon Jan 12 10:08:47 2015

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.6.0 (September 26, 2014)

Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)

MII Status: up
MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
Up Delay (ms): 0
Down Delay (ms): 0

Slave Interface: eth1

MII Status: up
Speed: Unknown
Duplex: Unknown
Link Failure Count: 2
Permanent HW addr: 00:0c:29:57:61:8e
Slave queue ID: 0

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Slave Interface: eth2
MII Status: up
Speed: Unknown
Duplex: Unknown
Link Failure Count: 2
Permanent HW addr: 00:0c:29:57:61:98
Slave queue ID: 0​

​------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

************ANOTHER PROCESS OF BONDING OR TEAMING ****************

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

​Create Active Backup​

​In this scenario, Slave interfaces remain same. only one change will be there in the bond
interface ifcfg-bond0 instead of ‘0‘ it will be ‘1‘ which is shown as under.​

​# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0​

​DEVICE=bond0
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=192.168.246.130
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
BONDING_OPTS="mode=1 miimon=100"​

​Restart network service and check the status of bonding.​

​# service network restart​

Shutting down interface bond0: [ OK ]

Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface bond0: [ OK ]

​Checking the status of the bond with command.​

​# watch -n .1

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0​

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Sample Output

Bonding Mode is showing fault-tolerance (active-backup) and Slave Interface is up.​

Every 0.1s: cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0 Mon Jan 12 12:10:37 2015

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.6.0 (September 2
6, 2009)

Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)

Primary Slave: None
Currently Active Slave: eth1
MII Status: up
MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
Up Delay (ms): 0
Down Delay (ms): 0

Slave Interface: eth1

MII Status: up
Speed: Unknown
Duplex: Unknown
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 00:0c:29:57:61:8e
Slave queue ID: 0

Slave Interface: eth2

MII Status: up
Speed: Unknown
Duplex: Unknown
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 00:0c:29:57:61:98
Slave queue ID: 0​

​M anually down and up the Slave Interfaces to check the working of Channel Bonding.
Please see the command as below.​

​# ifconfig eth1 down

# ifconfig eth1 up​

ANOTHER WAY TO CREATING BONDING & TEAMING

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All the system admin would like to avoid server outage by having redundancy for root file
system using mirroring, Multiple FC links to SAN with help of multi-pathing and many more.
So here the question is how do you provide redundancy in network level? Having a
multiple network card will not give any redundancy. In red hat Linux you need to configure
bonding to accomplish the network level redundancy. Once you have configured
the bonding/teaming by using two NIC cards, kernel will automatically detect the failure of
any NIC and work smartly according to that without any riot. Bonding can be used for load
sharing as well between two physical links.

The below diagram will explain how the bonding is happening.

Operating system used: Redhat Linux 6.3

NIC Details:

[root@mylinz2 network-scripts]# ifconfig -a |grep eth

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

eth4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:04

eth3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:F0

[root@mylinz2 network-scripts]#

Goal:
Configure bonding between eth2 and eth4 with name of bond0.

Step 1:

Add the below line in /etc/modprobe.conf

to load the bonding module in to kernel.

alias bond0 bonding

In redhat 6.3 , you need to create new file

called “bonding.conf” under
/etc/modprobe.d/ with below mentioned line.

# cat /etc/modprobe.d/bonding.conf

alias bond0 bonding

Step 2:

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Now time to create a bonding interface configuration file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
directory like the below one.

[root@mylinz2 network-scripts]# pwd

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

[root@mylinz2 network-scripts]# cat ifcfg-bond0

#This is congiguration file for bond0.Used NIC's eth2 & eth4

DEVICE=bond0

IPADDR=192.168.10.25

NETMASK=255.255.255.0

USRCTL=no

ONBOOT=yes

BOOTPRO=none

BONDING_OPTS="mode=0 miimon=100"

[root@mylinz2 network-scripts]#

Step:3

Create a configuration files under “/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/” for network interfaces if

not exists.If exists,have a contents like the below one.

[root@mylinz2 network-scripts]# cat ifcfg-eth2

DEVICE=eth2

HWADDR=00:0C:29:79:17:FA

BOOTPRO=none

ONBOOT=yes

MASTER=bond0

SLAVE=yes

USERCTL=no

[root@mylinz2 network-scripts]# cat ifcfg-eth4

DEVICE=eth4
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HWADDR=00:0C:29:79:17:04

BOOTPRO=none

ONBOOT=yes

MASTER=bond0

SLAVE=yes

USERCTL=no

Note:Do not copy paste the content from above output.MAC and DEVICE name will differ
for each system.

Step:4

Now restart the network service to load the configuration.

Note:Do not restart the network service without server maintenance window.

[root@mylinz2 ~]# service network restart

Shutting down interface eth2: Device state: 3 (disconnected) [ OK ]

Shutting down interface eth4: Device state: 3 (disconnected) [ OK ]

Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]

Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]

Bringing up interface bond0: Active connection state: activated

Active connection path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/15

[ OK ]

Bringing up interface eth3: Active connection state: activated

Active connection path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/16

[ OK ]

[root@mylinz2 ~]#

Step:5

Verify whether “bond0″ has come up with IP or not .

[root@mylinz2 Desktop]# ifconfig -a

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bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

inet addr:192.168.10.25 Bcast:192.168.10.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe79:17fa/64 Scope:Link

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:27 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:3843 (3.7 KiB) TX bytes:4169 (4.0 KiB)

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:2031 (1.9 KiB) TX bytes:2064 (2.0 KiB)

eth4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:1812 (1.7 KiB) TX bytes:2105 (2.0 KiB)

In the above output,you can see NIC eth2 and eth4 have flag “SLAVE” and interface “bond0″
has flag MASTER.Another thing you note both, the NIC interface will show same MAC
address.

Step:6
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Performing the live test to ensure bonding is providing the fault tolerance.

First i am removing the LAN cable from eth4 and let see what happens.

[root@mylinz2 Desktop]# ifconfig -a

bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

inet addr:192.168.10.25 Bcast:192.168.10.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe79:17fa/64 Scope:Link

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:27 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:3843 (3.7 KiB) TX bytes:4169 (4.0 KiB)

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:2031 (1.9 KiB) TX bytes:2064 (2.0 KiB)

eth4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

UP BROADCAST SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:1812 (1.7 KiB) TX bytes:2105 (2.0 KiB)

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Still the bond0 interface is UP and RUNNING fine.At the same time,”RUNNING” flag has
disappear from eth4.

Now i have connected LAN cable back to eth4 and pulling out from eth2.

[root@mylinz2 Desktop]# ifconfig -a

bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

inet addr:192.168.10.25 Bcast:192.168.10.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe79:17fa/64 Scope:Link

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:27 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:3843 (3.7 KiB) TX bytes:4169 (4.0 KiB)

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

UP BROADCAST SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:2031 (1.9 KiB) TX bytes:2064 (2.0 KiB)

eth4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:79:17:FA

UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:1812 (1.7 KiB) TX bytes:2105 (2.0 KiB)

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Still “bond0″ interface running with UP & RUNNING flag.So you have successfully configured
bonding on Redhat Linux 6.

To see complete bonding info,use below command.

[root@mylinz2 Desktop]# cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.6.0 (September 26, 2009)

Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)

MII Status: up

MII Polling Interval (ms): 0

Up Delay (ms): 0

Down Delay (ms): 0

Slave Interface: eth2

MII Status: up

Speed: 1000 Mbps

Duplex: full

Link Failure Count: 0

Permanent HW addr: 00:0c:29:79:17:fa

Slave queue ID: 0

Slave Interface: eth4

MII Status: up

Speed: 1000 Mbps

Duplex: full

Link Failure Count: 0

Permanent HW addr: 00:0c:29:79:17:04

Slave queue ID: 0

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[root@mylinz2 Desktop]#

To verify the current bonding mode,use below command.

[root@mylinz2 Desktop]# cat /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/mode

balance-rr 0

You can modify the bonding mode by editing “mode” in the ifcfg-bond0 configuration file.

[root@mylinz2 Desktop]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0 |grep -i mode

BONDING_OPTS="mode=0 miimon=100"

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td { padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc; } .tableizer-table th { background-
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Policy Details

Ploicy Name Code Description

balance-rr 0 Round-Robin policy for fault tolerance

active-backup 1 Active-Backup policy for fault tolerance

balance-xor 2 Exclusive-OR policy for fault tolerance

broadcast 3 All transmissions are sent on all slave interfaces.

802.3ad 4 Dynamic link aggregation policy

balance-tlb 5 Transmit Load Balancing policy for fault tolerance

balance-alb 6 Active Load Balancing policy for fault tolerance

To list the currently configured bonds,

[root@mylinz2 Desktop]# cat /sys/class/net/bonding_masters

bond0

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