Debian Linux Bonding and Cisco Catalyst 3750 - best practise?

[stephan.hermann]

Hello everybody,

I would like to know what's best practice to do this:

The two NICs of a Debian Linux server wants to be connected with two Switchports of a Cisco Catalyst 3750 switch(stack). My goal is to have load-balancing and failover.

My /etc/network/interfaces looks like this:

iface bond0 inet static
       address 192.168.0.30
       netmask 255.255.255.0
       network 192.168.0.0
       broadcast 192.168.0.255
       gateway 192.168.0.1
       dns-nameservers 192.168.0.10 192.168.0.20
       dns-search xyz.mycompany.com
       slaves eth0 eth1
       bond_mode ???
       bond_miimon 100
       bond_downdelay 200
       bond-updelay 200

First question: What bond mode should I use?

The switchports looks like this:

interface GigabitEthernet3/0/4
 switchport access vlan 20
 switchport mode access
 spanning-tree portfast

What changes are necessery here? Something like this?

interface GigabitEthernet3/0/4
 switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
 switchport mode trunk
 spanning-tree portfast
 

Thanks a lot for suggestions, hints, etc.! :-)

Greets

Stephan

[michael o'nan]

Here is a doc for reference:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3750x_3560x/software/release/12-2_53_se/configuration/guide/3750xscg/swethchl.html

I would default the configuration on both ports first. You can accomplish this by running default interface gi3/0/4.

While configuring the ports use interface range command. If your Debian machine supports LACP I would configure that as well. There are load balance commands where you can use different variations of source and destination mac or IP.

[stephan.hermann]

Hi Michael,

thanks a lot for your answer - and sorry for my late reply!
I like to show you my solution - I hope that it is a solution. ;-)

My config on the switch(stack):

switch#show etherchannel summary

...

Group  Port-channel  Protocol    Ports
------+-------------+-----------+-----------------------------------------------

...

2      Po2(SU)         LACP      Gi3/0/3(P)  Gi4/0/3(P)

switch#show running-config interface GigabitEthernet 3/0/3
Building configuration...

Current configuration : 172 bytes
!
interface GigabitEthernet3/0/3
 description myserver, eth0
 switchport access vlan 20
 switchport mode access
 channel-group 2 mode active
 spanning-tree portfast
end

lansw01#show running-config interface GigabitEthernet 4/0/3
Building configuration...

Current configuration : 172 bytes
!
interface GigabitEthernet4/0/3
 description myserver, eth1
 switchport access vlan 20
 switchport mode access
 channel-group 2 mode active
 spanning-tree portfast
end

switch#show running-config interface port-channel 2
Building configuration...

Current configuration : 82 bytes
!
interface Port-channel2
 switchport access vlan 20
 switchport mode access
end

The /etc/network/interfaces of my Debian machine looks like this:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto bond0
        iface bond0 inet static
        address 192.168.1.xxx
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        gateway 192.168.1.xxx
        dns-nameservers 192.168.1.xxx
        dns-search xxx.xxx.xxx
        bond-mode 4
        bond-miimon 100
        bond-downdelay 200
        bond-updelay 200
        bond-lacp-rate 1
        slaves eth0 eth1

This setup seems to work well. But I'm wondering that there is nothing with "trunking" in my setup. Would you like to give me your opinion about this?

Thanks a lot and many greets
Stephan