On a Power9, 9009-42A, V7R3, with 2 5899 PCIe2 4-port 1GbE Adapter, we have 4 ports, 2 from each card, port channeled to a Cisco C6504-E, using two cards.
Line description . . . . . . . . . : ETHAGG01
Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *BASIC
Category of line . . . . . . . . . : *ELAN
Resource name . . . . . . . . . . : *AGG
Bridge identifier . . . . . . . . : *NONE
Online at IPL . . . . . . . . . . : *YES
Vary on wait . . . . . . . . . . . : *NOWAIT
Aggregate policy:
Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . : *ETHCHL
Policy type . . . . . . . . . . : *DFT
Network controller . . . . . . . . : ETHAGNET
Local adapter address . . . . . . : 98BE940BE6EC
Exchange identifier . . . . . . . : 056DDBF0
Ethernet standard . . . . . . . . : *ETHV2
Line speed . . . . . . . . . . . . : *AUTO
Current line speed . . . . . . . . : 1G
Line description . . . . . . . . . : ETHAGG01
Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *AGGRSCL
Category of line . . . . . . . . . : *ELAN
Aggregated resource list . . . . . :
----------Aggregated Resource List-----------
Resource Status
CMN03 LINK UP
CMN06 LINK UP
CMN04 LINK UP
CMN05 LINK UP
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2022 10:09 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Laurence Chiu <lchiu7@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Has anybod done ethernet link aggregration on 7.3 with a server with two NICs going to two different switches?
IF the two switches are part of a switch stack then yes LCAP works across two switches. However if they are two independent switches then IBM i doesn't support that. Cisco for one does have a version of LACP that works across switches or routers but it's not supported by IBM i.
So the solution we utilize is to create a two port LCAP bundle using one port fomr each card to switch "A". Then create another two port LACP bundle using a second port from each card to switch "B". Then use a virtual IP that floats between the two LACP bundles.
That setup with let you tolerate a switch failure or a card/port/cable failure.
- DrF
On 1/22/2022 8:58 PM, Laurence Chiu wrote:
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
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