Configure Network Bonding on CentOS 6 / RHEL 6

28-Feb-2024

opentechdir

Network Bonding is the aggregation of multiple lan cards(eth0 & eth1) into a single interface called bond interface. Network Bonding is a kernel feature and also known as NIC teaming. Bonding is generally required to provide high availability and load balancing services.

In this tutorial we will configure network bonding on CentOS 6.X and RHEL 6.X , in my case i have two Lan Cards (eth0 & eth1) & will create bond interface (bond0).

Step:1 Create the bond file ( ifcfg-bond0 ) and specify the ip address, netmask & gateway

# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0

DEVICE=bond0
IPADDR=192.168.1.9
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
TYPE=Bond
ONBOOT=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no
BOOTPROTO=static

Step:2 Edit the files of eth0 & eth1 and make sure you enter the master and slave entry, as shown below

# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0
HWADDR=08:00:27:5C:A8:8F
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

DEVICE=eth1
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

Step:3 Create the Bond file(bonding.conf)

# vi /etc/modprobe.d/bonding.conf
alias bond0 bonding
options bond0 mode=1 miimon=100

Different Modes used in bonding.conf file .

balance-rr or 0 — round-robin mode for fault tolerance and load balancing. active-backup or 1 — Sets active-backup mode for fault tolerance. balance-xor or 2 — Sets an XOR (exclusive-or) mode for fault tolerance and load balancing. broadcast or 3 — Sets a broadcast mode for fault tolerance. All transmissions are sent on all slave interfaces. 802.3ad or 4 — Sets an IEEE 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation mode. Creates aggregation groups that share the same speed & duplex settings. balance-tlb or 5 — Sets a Transmit Load Balancing (TLB) mode for fault tolerance & load balancing. balance-alb or 6 — Sets an Active Load Balancing (ALB) mode for fault tolerance & load balancing.

Step:4 Now Restart the network Service

# service network restart

Using below command to Check the bond Interface

root@localhost ~]# ifconfig bond0
 bond0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:5C:A8:8F
 inet addr:192.168.1.9  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
 inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fe5c:a88f/64 Scope:Link
 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
 RX packets:6164 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
 TX packets:1455 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
 RX bytes:482336 (471.0 KiB)  TX bytes:271221 (264.8 KiB

Step:5 Verify the Status of bond interface.

[root@localhost ~]# cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0  
 Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.6.0 (September 26, 2009)

Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)
 Primary Slave: None
 Currently Active Slave: eth0
 MII Status: up
 MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
 Up Delay (ms): 0
 Down Delay (ms): 0

Slave Interface: eth0
 MII Status: up
 Speed: 1000 Mbps
 Duplex: full
 Link Failure Count: 0
 Permanent HW addr: 08:00:27:5c:a8:8f
 Slave queue ID: 0

Slave Interface: eth1
 MII Status: up
 Speed: 1000 Mbps
 Duplex: full
 Link Failure Count: 0
 Permanent HW addr: 08:00:27:7f:04:49
 Slave queue ID: 0

Note: As per the output shown above , we are currently using active-backup bonding. To do the testing just disable one interface and check whether you are still accessing your machine using the bond ip.

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