NIC Bonding : Bind multiple Network Interfaces (NIC) Into a Single Interface


The first step is to rename the server-change /etc/sysconfig/network to match your new server name.That’s easy :)

Now to the bonding driver. RHEL6 and OL 6 have deprecated /etc/modprobe.conf in favour of /etc/modprobe.d and its configuration files. It’s still necessary to tell the kernel that it should use the bonding driver for my new device, bond0 so I created a new file /etc/modprobe.d/bonding.conf with just one line in it:

alias bond0 bonding

That’s it, don’t put any further information about module parameters in the file, this is deprecated. The documentation clearly states “Important: put all bonding module parameters in ifcfg-bondN files”.

Now I had to create the configuration files for eth0, eth1 and bond0. They are created as follows:

File: ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0
 BOOTPROTO=none
 ONBOOT=yes
 MASTER=bond0
 SLAVE=yes
 USERCTL=no/
File: ifcfg-eth1

DEVICE=eth1
 BOOTPROTO=none
 ONBOOT=yes
 MASTER=bond0
 SLAVE=yes
 USERCTL=no
File: ifcfg-bond0

DEVICE=bond0
 IPADDR=192.168.0.126
 NETMASK=255.255.255.0
 ONBOOT=yes
 BOOTPROTO=none
 USERCTL=no
 BONDING_OPTS="<bonding parameters separated by spaces>"


Now for the bonding paramters-there are a few of interest. First, I wanted to set the mode to active-passive, which is Oracle recommended (with the rationale: it is simple). Additionally, you have to set either the arp_interval/arp_target parameters or a value to miimon to allow for speedy link failure detection. My BONDING_OPTS for bond0 is therefore as follows:

BONDING_OPTS=”miimon=1000 mode=active-backup”

Have a look at the documentation for more detail about the options.


The test is going to be simple: first I’ll bring up the interface bond0 by issuing a “system network restart” command on the xen console, followed by a “xm network-detach” command.The output of the network restart command is here:

[root@rhel6ref network-scripts]# service network restart
Shutting down loopback interface:  [  OK  ]
Bringing up loopback interface:  [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface bond0:  [  OK  ]


[root@rhel6ref network-scripts]# ifconfig
bond0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:1E:1B:1D:1F
          inet addr:192.168.99.126  Bcast:192.168.99.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::216:1eff:fe1b:1d1f/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:297 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:9002 (8.7 KiB)  TX bytes:1824 (1.7 KiB)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:1E:1B:1D:1F
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:214 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:6335 (6.1 KiB)  TX bytes:1272 (1.2 KiB)
          Interrupt:18

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:1E:1B:1D:1F
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:83 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:2667 (2.6 KiB)  TX bytes:552 (552.0 b)
          Interrupt:17

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)



The kernel traces these operations in /var/log/messages:

 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: Setting MII monitoring interval to 1000.
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: setting mode to active-backup (1).
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): bond0: link is not ready
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: Adding slave eth0.
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: Warning: failed to get speed and duplex from eth0, assumed to be 100Mb/sec and Full.
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: making interface eth0 the new active one.
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: first active interface up!
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: enslaving eth0 as an active interface with an up link.
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): bond0: link becomes ready
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: Adding slave eth1.
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: Warning: failed to get speed and duplex from eth1, assumed to be 100Mb/sec and Full.
 May  1 07:55:49 rhel6ref kernel: bonding: bond0: enslaving eth1 as a backup interface with an up link.


This shows an active device of eth0, with eth1 as the passive device. Note that the MAC addresses of all devices are identical (which is expected behaviour). Now let’s see what happens to the channel failover when I take a NIC offline. First of all I have to check xenstore which NICs are present:

Official Document on NIC Bonding

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