Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved


Chapter 1 General Administration Tasks : Configuring 802.3ad Link Aggregation

Configuring 802.3ad Link Aggregation
Overview
Link aggregation, defined in IEEE standard 802.3ad, is a standard for aggregating multiple Ethernet ports into one virtual interface. The aggregated ports appear as a single IP address to your P-7500 and applications, which means no application changes are required.
Used by the Network Acceleration Blade (NAB), 802.3ad link aggregation provides these advantages:
The capacity of multiple links is combined into one logical link.
With link aggregation, traffic on a failed link can be redirected to one of the other links in the LAG (that is, the logical port transparently continues to function over the remaining physical ports). This allows for larger client loads per P-7500 system with a longer meantime between failures.
All traffic to or from the logical port is transparently load shared among all of the available physical ports.
Since 802.3ad link aggregation is an open standard for the construction of aggregated links between multiple vendors’ devices, it allows for the interconnection of multiple vendors’ equipment.
Using link aggregation, network traffic is dynamically distributed across ports, so administration of what data actually flows across a given port is taken care of automatically within the aggregated link.
Note: The NAB configures 802.3ad link aggregation on TIBCO Messaging Appliance P-7500 systems as Active mode only. Thus, third-party switches that support 802.3ad link aggregation can be configured as either Active or Passive mode when connected to the TIBCO Messaging Appliance P-7500 system.
The link aggregation standard provides inherent, automatic redundancy on point-to-point links. In other words, if one of the multiple ports used in a link fails, network traffic is dynamically redirected to flow across the remaining good ports in the link. The redirection is fast and triggered when a switch detects the physical failure. The switch then sends the data to the new port location, and the network continues to operate with virtually no interruption.
Link Aggregation Tasks
By default through the setup Privileged EXEC command, the physical interfaces on the NAB are all configured as ’lag1’ upon completing the initial software configuration procedure described in TIBCO Messaging Appliance P-7500 Getting Started.
The NAB of a P-7500 system also supports multiple IP Addresses on an interface in addition to 802.3ad link aggregation. To assign independent IP addresses to every port of the NAB (that is, have no LAG configured), or have a mixture of some NAB ethernet ports grouped into a single LAG and the remaining ports independently addressed, refer to Chapter 8, Configuring IP Interfaces and Addresses.

Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved