Configuring Port Bonding for the MZ912

This section describes how to configure port bonding for the MZ912 in SLES 11.

In SLES 11, configure port bonding for the MZ912 in OS configuration files. The MZ912 supports seven port bonding modes, including active-backup, balancing, and LACP.

To configure port bonding, perform the following steps:

1. Run the ifconfig –a and yast2 lan commands to locate the MZ912 NIC ports.
2. Go to /etc/sysconfig/network, and create the file ifcfg-bond0 in this directory.

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

3. Add the following information to the ifcfg-bond0 file:

   BOOTPROTO='static'
   BROADCAST='192.168.100.255' //Enter the broadcast address in this network segment.
   IPADDR='192.168.100.100' //Enter an IP address for the port bonding.
   MTU=''
   NETMASK='255.255.255.0' //Enter a subnet mask.
   NETWORK='192.168.100.0' //Enter an IP address segment.
   REMOTE_IPADDR=''
   STARTMODE='onboot'
   BONDING_MASTER='yes'
   BONDING_MODULE_OPTS='miimon=100'
   BONDING_SLAVE0='eth12' //Enter the actual port number eth[num].
   BONDING_SLAVE1='eth13' //Enter the actual port number eth[num].

4. Move the ifcfg-eth[num] files to the backup directory.

   #mv /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth12 /backup/ifcfg-eth12
   #mv /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth13 /backup/ifcfg-eth13

5. Open the modprobe.conf.local file in /etc, and add the following information to the end of the file:

   #vi /etc/modprobe.conf.local
   alias bond0 bonding
   options bonding miimon=100 mode=0 use_carrier=0

   In the information, mode indicates the bonding mode. The MZ912 supports seven bonding modes:

   0: balance-rr (round-robin)

   1: active-backup

   2: balance-xor

   3: broadcast

   4: 802.3ad

   5: balance-tlb

   6: balance-alb

   If you want to set the bonding mode to 802.3ad, set the peer device port connected to the MZ912 to the link aggregation mode (static) in compliance with the IEEE 802.3ad specifications. For other bonding modes, the peer device port does not need special configuration.

6. Run the /etc/init.d/network restart or rcnetwork restart command to restart the network application.