I'm looking at ordering a new server. I am wanting reduncancy in the
NICs. I have searched this news group and found a lot of topics on
multiple NICs. I've been reading about EherChannel, but in the IBM
System Management Guide: Communications and Networks it says that "all
the links in one EtherChannel are attached to a single switch."

I'm not looking for an HA cluster, but I would like a solution that
allows the second NIC to be connected to a different switch and if a
failure occures in either the primary NIC, cable, switch, etc, the
secondary NIC will take over. I used to work on an HP rp8400 that had
this functionality. It has multiple NICs plugged into multiple
switches and if the primary failed, the secondary automaticly and
instantly took over. Is there anything like this with AIX 5.2??
Thanks for any suggestions.

T.

TB wrote:
> I'm looking at ordering a new server. I am wanting reduncancy in the
> NICs. I have searched this news group and found a lot of topics on
> multiple NICs. I've been reading about EherChannel, but in the IBM
> System Management Guide: Communications and Networks it says that
"all
> the links in one EtherChannel are attached to a single switch."
>
> I'm not looking for an HA cluster, but I would like a solution that
> allows the second NIC to be connected to a different switch and if a
> failure occures in either the primary NIC, cable, switch, etc, the
> secondary NIC will take over. I used to work on an HP rp8400 that
had
> this functionality. It has multiple NICs plugged into multiple
> switches and if the primary failed, the secondary automaticly and
> instantly took over. Is there anything like this with AIX 5.2??
> Thanks for any suggestions.
>
> T.

True "Etherchannel" does require "one switch". AIX Etherchannel
can be defined with one NIC in the Etherchannel and another
NIC as a "backup adapter". The backup adapter can be on a
different switch. When the primary NIC fails, AIX will move the
IP address to the second NIC so your network must handle that.

"TB" <chessgame@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1106678542.935351.188450@c13g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...
> I'm looking at ordering a new server. I am wanting reduncancy in the
> NICs. I have searched this news group and found a lot of topics on
> multiple NICs. I've been reading about EherChannel, but in the IBM
> System Management Guide: Communications and Networks it says that "all
> the links in one EtherChannel are attached to a single switch."
>
> I'm not looking for an HA cluster, but I would like a solution that
> allows the second NIC to be connected to a different switch and if a
> failure occures in either the primary NIC, cable, switch, etc, the
> secondary NIC will take over. I used to work on an HP rp8400 that had
> this functionality. It has multiple NICs plugged into multiple
> switches and if the primary failed, the secondary automaticly and
> instantly took over. Is there anything like this with AIX 5.2??
> Thanks for any suggestions.
>
> T.

In 5.2 they changed the Etherchannel a little. In 5.1 you could create an
etherchannel device with type netif_backup, this contained 2 nics and
created a etherchannel device that is used as your network adapter.
Now in 5.2 you create an etherchannel device of the type standard and just
add a second nic in the standby section and it will create the etherchannel
you will configure as you network interface. The 2 nics you use should be
on seperate switches and the failover works as you want it to . See the AIX
5.3 difference red book for more details.
Doug
>

Just to make sure, is Etherchannel part of the base OS? Or is it
additional software that needs purchased?

Thanks.

BOS
"TB" <chessgame@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1107977284.939304.111690@z14g2000cwz.googlegr oups.com...
> Just to make sure, is Etherchannel part of the base OS? Or is it
> additional software that needs purchased?
>
> Thanks.
>