How do I configure multiple network bonding channels on Red Hat Enterprise Linux? 

Resolution

• Multiple bonding setup is different for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5:

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (or update to initscripts-8.45.25-1.el5) and later, configuring multiple bonding channels is similar to configuring a single bonding channel. Setup the ifcfg-bondN and ifcfg-ethX files as if there were only one bonding channel. You can specify differentBONDING_OPTS for different bonding channels so that they can have different mode and other settings.

• For example, you can add the following line to /etc/modprobe.conf:

    alias bond0 bonding

    alias bond1 bonding

• And here is an example for ifcfg-bond0 and ifcfg-bond1:

ifcfg-bond0:

    DEVICE=bond0

    IPADDR=192.168.50.111

    NETMASK=255.255.255.0

    USERCTL=no

    BOOTPROTO=none

    ONBOOT=yes

    BONDING_OPTS="mode=0 miimon=100"

ifcfg-bond1:

    DEVICE=bond1

    IPADDR=192.168.30.111

    NETMASK=255.255.255.0

    USERCTL=no

    BOOTPROTO=none

    ONBOOT=yes

    BONDING_OPTS="mode=1 miimon=50"

Note: The bonding mode=0 is Round-robin policy. This mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance. The bonding mode=1 is Active-backup policy.

Note: When configuring BONDING_OPTS via ifcfg-bondX scripts, you should not configure "max_bonds=X" in either the ifcfg-bondX scripts or in /etc/modprobe.conf.  If bonding options are configured in modprobe.conf, "max_bonds=X" should be used if there is more than 1 bonding interface on the system.  See below for an example.

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4:

To configure multiple bonding channels, first setup the ifcfg-bondN and ifcfg-ethX files as if there were only one bonding channel..

• The change comes in setting up /etc/modprobe.conf. If the two bonding channels have the same bonding option, such as bonding mode, monitoring frequency, etc, add the max_bonds option. For example:

    alias bond0 bonding

    alias bond1 bonding

    options bonding max_bonds=2 mode=balance-rr miimon=100