On 1/3/2012 9:12 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>> On 12/23/2011 8:12 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>>>
>>>>
>>>> How? Depending on the way it's set up, it can cause major problems with
>>>> the switch. Disconnect one of the patch cords and see if performance
>>>> improves. If it does, you had a loop between the two switch ports, and
>>>> the two NICs in your server. Either reconfigure your NICs to use
>>>> fail-over, or make sure "spanning-tree" is enabled on the switch ports
>>>> facing the server. Keep in mind that by doing that you will lose your
>>>> 2Gbps aggregation speed and the second NIC will only be there to
>>>> provide
>>>> a host-stanby.
>>>>
>>>
>>> And by that, I mean "hot-standby". I Should have proof-read...
>>>
>>
>> I picked up on that - is there a 'safe' setup that would allow ganging
>> of ports like I have?
>>
>>
>
> Look into LACP (IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol). Both
> your NICs and the swith need support it (and be configured for it,
> obviously!) Cisco also has proprietary equivalents (EtherChannel and
> PAgP) that are sometimes supported by third party hardware.
>
>

I found a bit of time and put our switch into managed mode and R some of TM.

Looks like it supports "Link Aggregate Groups".

The linux box is set up with aggregation already - ethernet bonding with 
round-robin - actually pretty cool setup that I figured out when I set 
it up.

The switch and linux box are pre 2008 so they don't support the 802.1 - 
but should do the 802.3ad.

Some reading shows that I should be able to link the 2 server ports on 
the switch - don't know if it will make much difference but it seems 
like it is the way it should be.

Will have to try it in the morning when no-one is in the office.

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