I have some RHEL / CentOS 5 servers running on some Dell servers and they come with dual gigabit NIC's. I was wondering if anyone has in the past has done NIC Binding? I want to use one NIC as the primary and utilize the 2nd as a backup NIC in case the NIC or switch the primary NIC is connected to fails.

Anyone have any advice and or experience if this process works as described above?

It's been a few years, but I've done bonding on both RHEL and Cent. It's non-trivial, but fairly straight-forward when following the docs. Just be sure to understand each setting as you're making it.

Here's a good doc on it: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Bonding

You want to use "active-backup" or mode 1 (they are one and the same). That provides a fail-over if one of the NICs (or the cable it's using, or the port on the switch) dies.

The Cliff's notes version is that you find the mac of both interfaces, then you make a new bonding interface & tell it to use mode 1, then you tell the actual NICs that they are slaves of the bond.

edited to add: I always make a backup of the entire network dir before starting. I forget where that dir is on RHEL - /etc/sysconfig/network?