Configuring Port Channel on Linux Server Hosts
Avi Load Balancer
on Linux server (bare metal) cloud supports port channel (bond) interfaces. A port channel interface groups multiple physical interfaces into a single logical interface and provides fault tolerance, bandwidth aggregation, and traffic load balancing. A port channel interface can be configured with an IP address and VLAN trunking. Up to eight physical links can be grouped into a single port channel interface.- Port channeling is also referred to as port bonding, port trunking, and link aggregation.
- This feature is supported for IPv6 inAvi Load Balancer.
Link Interface Load Balancing
Based on the source and destination IP address and the Layer 4 protocol ports of the outgoing traffic, a hash is generated. The hash determines the transmitting link for this traffic to achieve load balancing.
Link Failure Recovery
Traffic directed on a failing link is automatically redirected to other links within the port channel interface to achieve fault tolerance.
Configuring Port Channel
This section discusses a set of sample port channel configuration files. In the Linux interface configuration files, a bond interface consists of a bond interface and one or more member (secondary) interfaces.
You can configure port channeling using the Linux server’s interface configuration files. This configuration is not supported on
Avi Load Balancer
.- Themode=4bonding option stands for Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP).
- ens1f0andens1f1are the two member interfaces ofbond0interface. The following options are configured for these interfaces as they are the secondary members of a logical interface withbond0as its primary member:
- MASTER=bond0
- SECONDARY=yes
- bond0.652interface is the VLAN interface underbond0, configured with VLAN=yes option.
Interface bond0’s Configuration file: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0
DEVICE=bond0 IPADDR=10.124.251.101 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 ONBOOT=yes BOOTPROTO=none USERCTL=no NM_CONTROLLED=no BONDING_OPTS="mode=4 miimon=100 xmit_hash_policy=layer3+4 use_carrier=1"
Interface ens1f0’s Configuration file: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens1f0
DEVICE=ens1f0 BOOTPROTO=none ONBOOT=yes MASTER=bond0 SLAVE=yes USERCTL=no NM_CONTROLLED=no
Interface ens1f1’s Configuration file: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens1f1
DEVICE=ens1f1 BOOTPROTO=none ONBOOT=yes MASTER=bond0 SLAVE=yes USERCTL=no NM_CONTROLLED=no
Configuring VLAN on Avi Load Balancer
Avi Load Balancer
You can configure VLANs and port channel interfaces with IPv6 addresses as well.
The following are the steps to configure a VLAN on a logical interface eth0 in
Avi Load Balancer
:- Navigate to . Select the required Service Engine (SE) where the VLAN interface is to be created and click edit icon.

- ClickCreate VLAN Interface.
- Select the parent interface from the drop-down menu, and specify theVLAN and IP Addressfields. ChooseGlobalfrom the drop-down menu for VRF. Specify the IP prefix of the Service Engine’s data vNIC in theStatic IP Prefixfield. ClickSaveoption.
- The configured VLAN interface will be displayed in theVLAN Interfacessection of theService Engineedit page.
- ClickSaveto commit the change.