CREATING BONDING OR TEAMING IN LINUX
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CREATING BONDING OR TEAMING IN LINUX

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Network Bonding 



There are almost six types of Channel Bond types are available. Here, we’ll review only two type ofChannel 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.eeth1 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.​

​# 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

Createbond0 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
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
          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

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​

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​

​Manually 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 AND TEAMING

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.

bonding diagram
Bonding between eth2 & eth4

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:

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
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
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

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)

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)

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
[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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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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