I have a P8 box with one 4 port NIC with two ports on each NIC going to two
different switches.
Each port has its own IP and then we use VIP to present only one external
IP. This is a legacy design, the goal being to handle port failures on the
switches but of course, the weak link is now the NIC.
I do have a a second NIC installed so could I have one port on NIC 1 go to
a port on switch 1 and one port on NIC 2 go to a port on switch 2 and so
handle both a switch failure as well as a NIC failure?
Doing some reading it seems (we run 7.3) it seems I could look at ethernet
link aggregation as per this link
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/i/7.3?topic=ethernet-link-aggregation
but it’s not clear if that would work if there are two different switches
involved.
Alternatively could we just define the two lines for the two switch
connections with each having their own IP addresses, and then just VIP to
present one IP to the host? Then potentially if one NIC (or one switch
port) fails, then the second NIC is still running.
That should mean no need to do any switch configuration like Virtual LInk
Aggregation or stacking (I think). Problem is our network guys know the
switches but are used to Windows or Linux boxes connected to them, not
intelligent boxes like Power servers with their enhanced networking
capabilities
midrange.com
