NIC Bonding provides either high-availability, load-balancing, maximum throughput, or a combination of these by combining two or more NICs to a single link. This article describes the procedures to implement NIC Bonding in SSFE.
To enable NIC Bonding, follow the given steps. The procedure assumes that the new NIC is already attached to the SSFE server and connected to the switch.
- Log in to the SSFE server shell.
- Edit the /etc/modules configuration file usng the command:
# sudo vi /etc/modules
- Add "bonding" to the list of modules.
For example:
# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
loop
lp
rtc
bonding
- Log in to the SSFE server shell.
- Run the "ifconfig" command and identify the device name of the NICs to be combined.
In the example provided in Step 4, the device names used are eth4 and eth5.
- Edit the interfaces configuration file using the command:
# sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
- Add the bonding configuration parameters similar to the following. You need to specify the correct IP address, gateway, and netmask for your environment in the bond0 section.
auto eth4
iface eth4 inet manual
bond-master bond0
auto eth5
iface eth5 inet manual
bond-master bond0
auto bond0
iface bond0 inet static
address 192.168.21.11
gateway 192.168.21.254
netmask 255.255.255.0
bond-mode 802.3ad
bond-miimon 100
bond-lacp-rate 1
up /sbin/ifenslave bond0 eth4 eth5
down /sbin/ifenslave -d bond0 eth4 eth5
- Log in to the SSFE server shell.
- Edit the firehol configuration file using the command:
sudo vi /etc/firehol/firehol.conf
- Add the following rules:
interface bond0 bond
client all accept
server all acceptThe rules will allow all types of traffic to and from the bonding interface. As a best practice, it is good to allow only the type of traffic and ports needed based on the NIC's purpose. For more information on configuring Firehol, refer to the Firehol documentation.
