LINK AGGREGATION IN SOLARIS

Link aggregation is the way of binding two or more interfaces and refer under one name so that the speed of the network interfaces can be maximized .

In solaris 10 we use dladm tool to create link aggregation . You can find these details for creating link aggregation in this post .

Before creating link aggregation let review what are required for that . We need just a server with additional NIC cards. Make sure that you are in console if you are doing this on the nic used for public IP.

root@solaris1>dladm show-dev
e1000g0 link: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full
e1000g1 link: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full
e1000g2 link: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full

Unplumb the interfaces before you use for link aggregation , otherwise it might give the error ,like the interface is in use . (Here I am using e1000g1 and e1000g2 for link aggregation)

Below is the dladm command used with create -aggr subcommand to create link aggregation of e1000g1 and e1000g2 .

root@solaris1>dladm create-aggr -d e1000g1 -d e1000g2 1

option -d specifies the device name and argument 1 is the first instance .(It creates the link aggr1).

Now as specified using argument 1 generally called a key value will create link aggr1 .

root@solaris1>dladm show-aggr
key: 1 (0x0001) policy: L4 address: 0:c:29:ad:75:ca (auto)
device address speed duplex link state
e1000g1 0:c:29:ad:75:ca 0 Mbps half unknown standby
e1000g2 80:ac:ce:0:80:fe 0 Mbps half unknown standby


dladm with subcommand show-aggr will show the key value , policy used and mac address used for created aggr1 . Still the state for interfaces is in standby because aggr1 is not plumbed yet . So, plumb the aggr1 device now .

root@solaris1>ifconfig aggr1 plumb
root@solaris1>ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
e1000g0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2
inet xxx.xxx.xx.20 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 1xx.xxx.xx.255
ether 0:c:29:ad:75:c0
aggr1: flags=1000842 mtu 1500 index 3
inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0
ether 0:c:29:ad:75:ca

assign IP address to aggr1 and now the aggr1 is ready with IP and accepts/send IP packets .

root@solaris1>dladm show-aggr
key: 1 (0x0001) policy: L4 address: 0:c:29:ad:75:ca (auto)
device address speed duplex link state
e1000g1 0:c:29:ad:75:ca 1000 Mbps full up attached
e1000g2 80:ac:ce:0:80:fe 1000 Mbps full up attached

Below is the statistics shown for the links used in aggregation .

root@solaris1>dladm show-aggr -s
key: 1 ipackets rbytes opackets obytes %ipkts %opkts
Total 8 512 8 512
e1000g1 8 512 0 0 100.0 0.0
e1000g2 0 0 8 512 0.0 100.0