Re: round-robin mode for AIX's etherchannel.

Trunking normally requires that all the ports are attached to the same switch
(well, at least Cisco does). If a port fails, the other continue to work, but
if the switch fails, all the ports are disabled.

What you may wish to do is create an Etherchannel with several adapters trunked
together off of one switch, and then enable NIB (the backup adapter in
Etherchannel) to an adapter on another switch. Depending upon your performance
versus reliability requirements, with 4 adapters you might do something like:

------------ ---------- -----------
| Switch 1 |--1-----------| Host |--4--------------| Switch 2 |
| |--2-----------| | | |
| |--3-----------| | | |
------------ ---------- -----------

Combine adapters 1,2,3 into a trunk and then use adapter 4 as the NIB.

Mark Hunter
Anheuser-Busch Cos.
MIS Consultant, ES&SO Server Planning and Integration
*Office: (314) 765-2339
*Email: Mark.Hunter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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-----Original Message-----
From: IBM AIX Discussion List [mailto:aix-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Enrique
Sanchez Vela
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 9:42 AM
To: aix-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: round-robin mode for AIX's etherchannel.

--- "Bull, Robert D." <Bob.Bull@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Keep in mind that the parameters that you specify in AIX are for
outgoing connections only. Incoming connections are controlled by the
settings on the switch.

Bob



right but I am looking for a way to protect my server from switch failures, if I
could form an etherchannel adapter with the round-robin policy using different
adapters and AIX detects whether the link is up or not before using a particular
link, I would be protected and taking the most juice out of my NICs for the
outbound traffic, fixing the incoming traffic patterns would be more
interesting.

regards,
enrique.

--------------------------------------
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by yourself leaves a path in your mind
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arises." --G. C. Lichtenberg

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