LACP port-channel down but Individual ports up

[Tyler Woods]

I have setup an active LACP consisting of two members in each port-channel. As it is configured now the individual ports are operational but not participating as members of the LACP. Not finding any reference to exactly why this is. From what I can gather this may be related to the host configuration? 

If anyone can enlighten me to such a situation it would be greatly appreciated. Would be even better if anyone had experience with the Oracle Database Appliance requirements for network configuration on the Cisco side.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group Port-       Type     Protocol  Member Ports
      Channel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
210   Po210(SD)   Eth      LACP      Eth107/1/11(I)  Eth108/1/12(I)
211   Po211(SD)   Eth      LACP      Eth107/1/12(I)  Eth108/1/11(I)

interface port-channel210
  description pdxodaprod-node0
  switchport access vlan 48

interface Ethernet107/1/11
  description pdxodaprod-node0-net0
  switchport access vlan 48
  speed auto
  channel-group 210 mode active

interface Ethernet108/1/12
  description pdxodaprod-node0-net1
  switchport access vlan 48
  speed auto
  channel-group 210 mode active

interface port-channel211
  description pdxodaprod-node1
  switchport access vlan 48

interface Ethernet108/1/11
  description pdxodaprod-node1-net0
  switchport access vlan 48
  speed auto
  channel-group 211 mode active

interface Ethernet107/1/12
  description pdxodaprod-node1-net1
  switchport access vlan 48
  speed auto
  channel-group 211 mode active

[Peter Paluch]

Hi Tyler,

Individual ports in an LACP EtherChannel are ports that are waiting for the neighboring device to start negotiating the EtherChannel using LACP. The fact that the ports remained in the Individual state means that most probably, the neighboring device is not sending any LACPDUs and therefore no EtherChannel negotiation takes place.

Can you make sure that the neighboring device is truly configured to run LACP and negotiate the EtherChannel dynamically?

Best regards,
Peter

[Tyler Woods]

Hello Peter, 

That is my understanding as well. To the best of the system administrators knowledge it is configured for LACP and Oracle has finally come back and told us to configure for LACP active on the network switch side. LACP is nowhere mentioned when configuring the ODA. Going to look over the sys admin's shoulder next to see if I can spot anything. 

Thank you Paul!

[devils_advocate]

Either the Oracle side is not running LACP or it has been misconfigured somewhere.

Try putting the portchannel to 'on' instead and see if it works. 

[Peter Paluch · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Putting the EtherChannel to the "on" mode will force the ports to become bundled unconditionally but the true problem, then, is truly seeing if it works. The Cisco switch will happily keep the ports bundled and will even transmit data over these ports but how do we know if Oracle is happy with that and does the same?

Personally, I would not recommend using the "on" mode precisely because of lack of any indication that things are operating just as they should, unless it can be shown without doubts that Oracle runs without LACP and uses a static EtherChannel.

Best regards,
Peter

[Tyler Woods]

Yes, 'on' did not make anything happy. 

I spoke to the Oracle tech myself pointing out what I found related to configuring LACP in Oracle Linux that I did not see on ours. They confirmed a change to the NIC script and all appears to be happy now. 

Thank you for confirming my thoughts on this. 

[Tyler Woods]

Tried that. One worked the other did not.

[Mikel Ward]

Thanks for this, also applies to Windows 2012! Helped me (network guy) to communicate my lack of LACP's to the IS team.