Installation guide

Chapter 2. Hardware Installation and Operating System Conﬁguration 29

6. Set up the bonded Ethernet channels, if applicable. Refer to

Section 2.5.1 Conﬁguring Ethernet Channel Bonding for more information.

7. Run the ping command to verify packet transmission between all cluster nodes.

2.5.1. Conﬁguring Ethernet Channel Bonding

Ethernet channel bonding in a no-single-point-of-failure cluster system allows for a fault

tolerant network connection by combining two Ethernet devices into one virtual device.

The resulting channel bonded interface ensures that in the event that one Ethernet device

fails, the other device will become active. This type of channel bonding, called an active-

backup policy allows connection of both bonded devices to one switch or can allow each

Ethernet device to be connected to separate hubs or switches, which eliminates the single

point of failure in the network hub/switch.

Channel bonding requires each cluster node to have two Ethernet devices installed. When it

is loaded, the bonding module uses the MAC address of the ﬁrst enslaved network device

and assigns that MAC address to the other network device if the ﬁrst device fails link

detection.

To conﬁgure two network devices for channel bonding, perform the following:

1. Create a bonding devices in /etc/modprobe.conf. For example:

alias bond0 bonding

options bonding miimon=100 mode=1

This loads the bonding device with the bond0 interface name, as well as passes

options to the bonding driver to conﬁgure it as an active-backup master device for

the enslaved network interfaces.

2. Edit the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX conﬁguration ﬁle

for both eth0 and eth1 so that the ﬁles show identical contents. For example:

DEVICE=ethX

USERCTL=no

ONBOOT=yes

MASTER=bond0

SLAVE=yes

BOOTPROTO=none

This will enslave ethX (replace X with the assigned number of the Ethernet devices)

to the bond0 master device.

3. Create a network script for the bonding device (for example,

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0), which would appear like

the following example:

DEVICE=bond0

USERCTL=no

ONBOOT=yes

BROADCAST=192.168.1.255

NETWORK=192.168.1.0