[Linux-cluster] bonding question?

[Omer Faruk Sen]

Yes now I understand that switch should also be configured for bonding. I
think bonding is called as ethernet trunking in cisco world which I have
found out from:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-beowulf/2004/08/msg00022.html and
http://www.crazygreek.co.uk/content/bonding_cisco

It seems that there is one more

> The short answer is yes, bonded pairs offer both performance improvement
> and availability.  I tend to doubt that most servers with any real
> application could process all of the traffic from 2 1gb ethernet ports.
>
> The network guys here set up 3 Cisco 3750 switches with the high speed
> link that ties them together into one large switch.  On redhat
> enterprise 3, I set up 2 bonded ethernets, each plugged into different
> switches.  I have noticed that the inbound traffic goes to the first
> ethernet, but outbound traffic is round-robin.  As I understand it, the
> Cisco switches do not do round-robin because there is no efficient way
> to keep track of which port received the last packet.  It is faster to
> send all packets for a bonded ethnet pair to one port.  I can pull
> either ethernet port and the other will take over the traffic.
>
> As I understand it, any of the 3 switches can fail and every thing will
> stay up.
>
> Sorry, I have never used a NetApp with ISCSI.
>
> Matt
>
> On Sun, 2005-12-18 at 04:20, Omer Faruk Sen wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is bonding can be used only for performance improvements or can it be
>> also
>> used for path availability along with redundant switch (2 switches)
>> configuration for iSCSI ?
>>
>> Also in a paper of netapp (http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3192.pdf)
>> iSCSI configuration is shown as 2 connection for one switch (in NAS
>> ISLAND
>> Linux Cluster) but in SAN ISLAND (fiber connection and switches) 1
>> connection is being made for one switch which provides path
>> availability.
>> What I want to ask is how path availability without SPOF can be provided
>> with iSCSI solutions? Can I achive it with 2 ethernet card that works
>> with
>> bonding and each of them is connected to one switch (2 switches is
>> configured in cluster)? I think for that I have to use multipath
>> (http://christophe.varoqui.free.fr/wiki/wakka.php?wiki=Home) software
>> for
>> that. Am I right?
>


-- 
Omer Faruk Sen
http://www.faruk.net