[nylug-talk] Multi-NIC Redundancy On A Single Host

[Rodrick Brown]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 10:42 AM, H. G. <tekronis at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greets, folks.
>
> Can anyone suggest techniques for doing multi-interface failover on a single
> host
> besides using channel bonding?  Bonding requires use of a switch that
> supports
> such.  I'd like to get a good idea of what other options exist for doing
> this, so
> I'd appreciate suggestions.
>
> Thanks.
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Unless you're going multi nics to distribute i/o I would recommended
building redundancy into your applications by going distributed if
possible and not using bonding.

I use to be a big fan of bonding and ipmp until I started to notice
how much extra cabling and ports we're consumed for very little gain.
I cant remember a single instance where bonding has truly been useful
the only advantage I could see were during  switch upgrades where you
could upgrade each switch in succession and theoretically not impact
users, but seriously this type of work could easily be coordinated off
hours or during low usage times.

When it comes to server hardware the network adapter is the single
most reliable component I've seen to date.  More and more systems
these days have the network i/o's directly attached to the logic/main
board so its less likely that you could every attribute a network
adapter problem to a faulty adapter.

Just my two cents.

-- 
Rodrick R. Brown
http://www.rodrickbrown.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rodrickbrown