UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hi

I consider how to plug server into infrastructure. What is the actual standard for sys admins to plug server and make it up and running.

Whether use LACP/EtherChannel, IPMP, JumboFrame and when ?
How to make server redundancy and fail-over to maximize its uptime ?
How many network interfaces use (e.g. 2 or more) ?

thx for help.

That totally depends your needs/requirements and on your hardware, OS and application you are going to use. A bit more details would help people to give adequate answers.

I need info for 2 appliances :

1.
hardware : Sun SPARC T5120
OS : Solaris 10
application : database server for oracle 11g
needs : failover, redundancy

2.
hardware : IBM System x3550 M2 Express
OS : Linux Debian Lenny
application : LDAP server
needs : failover, redundancy

On both machines I have multiple NICs (Sun got 4, IBM got 2).

How many I should use for my appliance ?
When to use JumboFrame ?
When LACP/EtherChannel ?
When to use IPMP ?


thxfor help

As I come from other OS'es than Solaris, LCAP and IPMP looks very similar to me. It is both a form of Etherchannel, Bonding, Trunking or whatever names are being used for it when to have some kind of network failover and/or load balancing.

Of course whatever name you take, whatever OS you take, you want some redundancy for your network connect in case an adapter, a switch or anything else on the way to the network fails.

On Linux you usually take bonding. On Solaris I guess it is IPMP. Make sure you have each network adapter, that is part of such a bonding/IPMP, being connected to two different switches for redundancy.

With 2 adapters on your Linux box there is not much choice anyway where to bind and connect what. For the 4 adapters on your Solaris box(es), you'll have to decide if you split/bind those. Depending on the case that you might need more bandwith, you can maybe have something like:

A "bonded" device that contains of all 4 adapters, where 3 go to a switch A as primary connection being all active for bandwith purpose and having 1 backup adapter to another switch in case those 3 fail. But for details what is possible with IPMP, check the documentations or ask in the Solaris sub forum maybe.
You can also use 1x2 "bonded" Adapters for production network and the other pair for backup (in terms of data network backup) purposes. Up to you.

Edit:
Forgot to say, that your switches etc. have to support trunking/etherchannel etc.
For Jumbo Frames it is just a matter, if your NICs support it and also the switches. You will also have to try out if you have any advantage of it, I guess.

thx 'zaxxon' for the reply.

But I have couple more question, when I should use Jumbo Frame in connection ?
In what circumstances (e.g. between data base servers or other) ?

Whether in entire vlan where Jumbo Frames must be activated or only in NIC of server in that vlan ?

We do not use Jumbo Frames at all - I suggest meanwhile you wait for an answer, you might want to read up on them on the web.

Does anyone can tell me about Jumbo Frames ?

My questions :
-----------------
1. When use Jumbo Frames ?
2. How to implement Jumbo Frames in infrastructure ?


thx for help.