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.
  1. Port channeling is also referred to as port bonding, port trunking, and link aggregation.
  2. This feature is supported for IPv6 in
    Avi 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
.
  • The
    mode=4
    bonding option stands for Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP).
  • ens1f0
    and
    ens1f1
    are the two member interfaces of
    bond0
    interface. The following options are configured for these interfaces as they are the secondary members of a logical interface with
    bond0
    as its primary member:
    • MASTER=bond0
    • SECONDARY=yes
  • bond0.652
    interface is the VLAN interface under
    bond0
    , 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

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
:
  1. Navigate to
    Infrastructure
    Service Engine Group
    . Select the required Service Engine (SE) where the VLAN interface is to be created and click edit icon.
  2. Click
    Create VLAN Interface
    .
  3. Select the parent interface from the drop-down menu, and specify the
    VLAN and IP Address
    fields. Choose
    Global
    from the drop-down menu for VRF. Specify the IP prefix of the Service Engine’s data vNIC in the
    Static IP Prefix
    field. Click
    Save
    option.
  4. The configured VLAN interface will be displayed in the
    VLAN Interfaces
    section of the
    Service Engine
    edit page.
  5. Click
    Save
    to commit the change.