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-   -   Bonding - is it worth doing with normal PCI (not PCI) hardware (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-networking-3/bonding-is-it-worth-doing-with-normal-pci-not-pci-hardware-715995/)

stejamtro 04-01-2009 04:16 AM
Bonding - is it worth doing with normal PCI (not PCI-E) hardware
 
I've got an Openfiler box with 4x500gb, an EPIA Mini-ITX M/B with 2xNics (1x1000/100/10,1x100/10) on the board itself. When I first installed the box, and had it running for a while, I decided to bond the 2 Nics to try and get more throughput at least within my home network, as I use it as a server to store TV episodes and such like.

I had to do a clean up (dusting and vacuuming)of the office and uncabled everything, but when I started the box back up again after the clean up, in headless mode, it couldn't be found on the network from my router.
Turns out it was Kernel panicking when the bond was started and I had to attach a monitor and keyboard to find this out. I did some research and thought that it might be the new Kernel that was installed at the last update, as it started Ok when I chose the previous Kernel from the grub menu.

I decided to remove the bond to get it to go again with the new kernel, and do a wee bit more research before 'perhaps' re-instating it. So my question is; given that it's just a PCI (not PCI-E) box, does the forum think it's worth doing given the: 32/8*33.3*1,000,000/1,048,576=127.2 MBytes/second speed of the PCI bus ? or is just the GigaBit Nic sufficient ? I really don't want to take the chance of it Kernel panicking again, and I'm not sure how much value bonding a GigaBit and Megabit Nic would give me. also there's no room for me to insert another GigaBit card in the case in the spare PCI slot.

TB0ne 04-01-2009 09:58 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by stejamtro (Post 3494657)
I've got an Openfiler box with 4x500gb, an EPIA Mini-ITX M/B with 2xNics (1x1000/100/10,1x100/10) on the board itself. When I first installed the box, and had it running for a while, I decided to bond the 2 Nics to try and get more throughput at least within my home network, as I use it as a server to store TV episodes and such like.

I had to do a clean up (dusting and vacuuming)of the office and uncabled everything, but when I started the box back up again after the clean up, in headless mode, it couldn't be found on the network from my router.
Turns out it was Kernel panicking when the bond was started and I had to attach a monitor and keyboard to find this out. I did some research and thought that it might be the new Kernel that was installed at the last update, as it started Ok when I chose the previous Kernel from the grub menu.

I decided to remove the bond to get it to go again with the new kernel, and do a wee bit more research before 'perhaps' re-instating it. So my question is; given that it's just a PCI (not PCI-E) box, does the forum think it's worth doing given the: 32/8*33.3*1,000,000/1,048,576=127.2 MBytes/second speed of the PCI bus ? or is just the GigaBit Nic sufficient ? I really don't want to take the chance of it Kernel panicking again, and I'm not sure how much value bonding a GigaBit and Megabit Nic would give me. also there's no room for me to insert another GigaBit card in the case in the spare PCI slot.
Well, that depends on if you're saturating the Gig-E link now or not. If you're not approaching capacity on that line, it's not worth it.

However, if it is a critical service, and you NEED it going all the time, you could bind the two NIC's together, via a 'virtual' IP address, one link to different core routers. That way, if one link goes dead, the server keeps on going....


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