How to bond two nics on Xserve

[rolfharris]

Hi Guys,

Can anyone tell me how to do the following -

I want to bond the two physical nics in the Apple Xserve so that they are one logical interface with one ip address.


Cheers

 

[bmhealy001]

1- click on network under system preferences

2- Click on the gear at the bottom left and select "manage virtual interfaces"

3- Click the plus sign at the bottom of the window that appears and select "new link aggregate"

4- Give the aggregate link a name and select which ports should be used

5- Click create


That should be all you need to do. It's been a while since I've done it but I think that was everything. Let me know if you need anything else.

 

[Trip.Tucker]

1- click on network under system preferences

2- Click on the gear at the bottom left and select "manage virtual interfaces"

3- Click the plus sign at the bottom of the window that appears and select "new link aggregate"

4- Give the aggregate link a name and select which ports should be used

5- Click create


That should be all you need to do. It's been a while since I've done it but I think that was everything. Let me know if you need anything else.

And the switch? You'll need an aggregate aware switch. Do you intend to configure the switch with a portgroup LACP? Unless you configure a suitable switch correctly, you're wasting your time.

 

[rolfharris]

Hi

Thanks for the response, i did that, one question though

On the interfaces that i add in to the team (virtual interface) what do i set their ip addresses to. I would say leave them blank as i would on a windows server and set the ip on the new virtual nic.

However if i leave them blank then i cant ping the new logical interface. If i set the interface to off then it disconnects from the virtual interface.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers

 

[bmhealy001]

on my setup, although I am not sure this has to be done, after I set up the link aggregate and gave it it's IP address I went back to all the individual network connections (4 in my case) and under configuration set them to off.

Keep in mind though that what another poster said about having a switch that can handle a link aggregation is absolutely correct. If you don't have that it will never work.

 

[yellow]

And the switch? You'll need an aggregate aware switch.

This is a very important part of the equation. Link aggregation is pointless without a switch that can support it.

 

[rolfharris]

Hi lads,

I now have it plugged into a cisco 3750 switch which has link aggregation support enabled on it. I suppose my main question is what do i set the physical nics to interms of when i go to edit the physical nics properties, do i set the configure drop down box to Manually,OFF, DHCP etc etc, ip address etc etc

Cheers

 

[belvdr]

I'm not familiar with doing this on OS X, but on other operating systems, you do not bind any IP to the physical interfaces. You leave those off, and bind the IP to the virtual interface creating.

 

[bmhealy001]

I have mine set to off

 

[rolfharris]

Lads

I have it sorted (With some help ), steps involved were

1.) Create the virtual interface and add in the physical nics to the team.
2.) Set the physical nics to off in their settings
3.) Input ip info into virtual interface.
4.) Create etherchannel on switch (step that i misconfigured) and add in ports
5.) Done.

Thanks for all the suggestions, it was the LACP step that i had missed out on, i assumed all our switches had this functionality when in fact that was not the case.

Cheers