Configure network bonding Link Aggregation using LACP under RHEL CentOS OEL 5.9

I wrote this from the work on OEL 5.9 64 bit.

The server has 2 physical NICs bonding into 1 IP address.

1.Config the initial bonding configuration

1.1 eth0
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

# Emulex Corporation OneConnect 10Gb NIC (be3)
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
USERCTL=no

1.2 eth1
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

# Emulex Corporation OneConnect 10Gb NIC (be3)
DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
USERCTL=no

1.3 bond0
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0

# Bonding Network
DEVICE=bond0
USERCTL=no
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=10.144.244.14
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=10.144.244.0
GATEWAY=10.144.244.1
TYPE=Unknown
IPV6INIT=no

2.Config Bonding modules

2.1 Bonding settings
# cat /etc/modprobe.conf

alias scsi_hostadapter shpchp
alias eth0 be2net
alias eth1 be2net
alias scsi_hostadapter1 cciss
alias scsi_hostadapter2 usb-storage
alias bond0 bonding
options bond0 miimon=100 mode=4 lacp_rate=1

2.2 Load the bonding modules into the “running” kernel

# modprobe bond0
# lsmod | grep bond
bonding        126649    0

3.Configure your network settings
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network

NETWORKING=yes
NETWORKING_IPV6=no
HOSTNAME=DB01.milliondollarserver.com

4.Restart the network stack
# service network restart

5.Check the routing configuration
# route -n

6.Check bonding stack for errors
# cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.4.0-2 (October 7, 2008)

Bonding Mode: IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation
Transmit Hash Policy: layer2 (0)
MII Status: up
MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
Up Delay (ms): 0
Down Delay (ms): 0

802.3ad info
LACP rate: fast
Active Aggregator Info:
        Aggregator ID: 1
        Number of ports: 1
        Actor Key: 33
        Partner Key: 1
        Partner Mac Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00

Slave Interface: eth0
MII Status: up
Speed: 10000 Mbps
Duplex: full
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: e4:11:5b:e0:55:b8
Aggregator ID: 1

Slave Interface: eth1
MII Status: up
Speed: 10000 Mbps
Duplex: full
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: e4:11:5b:e0:55:bc
Aggregator ID: 2

Note:The most important line is “LACP rate: fast” make sure that you can see it in your output