Configure Bond using two Ethernet Adapters

The following example sets the xCAT properties for compute node cn1 to create:

  • Compute node cn1 with two physical NICs: eth2 and eth3
  • Bond eth2 and eth3 as bond0
  • Assign ip 40.0.0.1 to the bonded interface bond0

Add network object into the networks table

Add the network net40 in the networks table

chdef -t network net40 net=40.0.0.0 mask=255.0.0.0

Define attributes in the nics table

  1. Compute node cn1 has two physical NICs: eth2 and eth3

    chdef cn1 nictypes.eth2=ethernet nictypes.eth3=ethernet

  2. Define bond0 and bond eth2 and eth3 as bond0

    chdef cn1 nictypes.bond0=bond nicdevices.bond0="eth2|eth3"
chdef cn1 nicips.bond0=40.0.0.1

  3. Define nicnetworks for bond0

    chdef cn1 nicnetworks.bond0=net40

Enable confignetwork to configure bond

  1. If adding confignetwork into the node’s postscripts list, confignetwork will be executed during OS deployment on compute node

    chdef cn1 -p postscripts=confignetwork

  2. Or if the compute node is already running, use updatenode command to run confignetwork postscript

    updatenode cn1 -P confignetwork

Verify bonding mode

Login to compute node cn1 and check bonding options in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0 file

BONDING_OPTS="mode=802.3ad xmit_hash_policy=layer2+3"
  • mode=802.3ad requires additional configuration on the switch.
  • mode=2 can be used for bonding without additional switch configuration.