Creating the Link Aggregate

If your configuration was similar to mine, you will already have your interfaces plumbed – which means they cannot be added to the link aggregate until they are unplumb’ed.

Checking for Plumbing

If you try to create an aggregate with plumbed interfaces, you will receive a “dladm: create operation failed: link busy” error. You can check if they have been plumbed as they will show in the list for “ifconfig -a”:

e1000g0: flags=1000842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 8
 inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0
 ether 0:15:17:b8:47:a8
e1000g1: flags=1000842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 9
 inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0
 ether 0:15:17:b8:47:a9
e1000g2: flags=1000842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 10
 inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0
 ether 0:15:17:b8:47:aa
e1000g3: flags=1000842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 11
 inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0
 ether 0:15:17:b8:47:ab

If they appear, as shown above, unplumb them using the following commands:

ifconfig e1000g0 unplumb
ifconfig e1000g1 unplumb
ifconfig e1000g2 unplumb
ifconfig e1000g3 unplumb

Create the Aggregate and Plumb It!

Using the dladm tool, you can easily create the aggregate usign the following command:

dladm create-aggr -d e1000g0 -d e1000g1 -d e1000g2 -d e1000g3 1

You’lll notice a -d with each interface and a number 1 at the end. The number 1 references the aggregate number and it must start at 1, not 0.

Next we will plumb the newly created aggregate with an IP address:

ifconfig aggr1 plumb 192.168.0.101 up

Show me the Aggregate

If you are like me, then you will want to see the aggregate configured:

dladm show-aggr

You should see an output similar to the following:

LINK            POLICY   ADDRPOLICY           LACPACTIVITY  LACPTIMER   FLAGS
aggr1           L4       auto                 off           short       -----

Modify Aggregate for LACP

To ensure that LACP is functioning as I would hope, I modified the aggregate, changing LACPACTIVITY to active instead of off. Use the following command to modify LACPACTIVITY:

dladm modify-aggr -L active -T short 1

Now run the following command to verify the settings took:

dladm show-aggr

You should now see an output similar to the following:

LINK            POLICY   ADDRPOLICY           LACPACTIVITY  LACPTIMER   FLAGS
aggr1           L4       auto                 active        short       -----

Setting Aggregate IP Configuration as Persistent

To ensure that your IP address configuration for the aggregate is persistent across reboots, modify the /etc/hostname.aggr1 file and add the desired IP address. The /etc/hostname.aggr1 should contain one line consisting of the IP address:

192.168.0.101

Switch Configuration

Obviously, you must configure the switch for LACP otherwise your aggregate will fail. Each switch is different, refer to the manual for your switch.

I’m out…

PROSet Application?

The PROSet tool is no longer a separate application. Instead, Intel has integrated the PROSet functionality into the device properties of the Intel network interface cards. In my situation, I had to install the 64bit, “Windows 7” driver PROWIN7X64.EXE. Obviously, this will install the latest drivers for the Intel NIC, and it will install the PROSet device manager adaption – and hopefully you specified to have the Advanced Network Services (ANS) installed too.

Open a properties window for your network interface card and click on the Configure button – you should notice Advanced, Link Speed – and if you are lucky Teaming and VLAN!

The Teaming Tab

For those that know they should have the Teaming tab available, but for some reason do not (verify full support), you may need to disable and re-enable one of the ports on the adapter for Teaming to show up.

For those that had the teaming tab visible, you must disable iSCSI Remote Boot. There are apparently two ways to configure this: one is through configuring the adapter during the Intel boot message during, well a system boot; two is through flashing the ROM on the adapter, removing the iSCSI Remote Boot functionality all together. I ended up performing the latter…

Removing the iSCSI Remote Boot

Download the latest Intel tool package, PROBOOT.EXE, for your controller, for me, it was PROBOOT.EXE. Extract these files onto a form of media that you can access from a DOS prompt and boot your computer into DOS. If you do not have a DOS boot disk, there are plenty of sites available that can assist you with making a DOS boot disk/CD. Once you have access to the files from PROBOOT, run the following:

1. “ibautil -all -flashenable”
     -reboot your computer into DOS again-
2. “ibautil -all -upgrade”
     -reboot into Windows-

Creating the Team

Now that you know where the PROSet “application” resides, the Intel Proset for Windows Device Manager, and you have the Teaming tab available, create the Team.

Unsure if my situation is unique, however I used 802.3ad LACP for my team and had to wait for the team virtual adapter to be completely initialized PRIOR to modifying the properties of that team. The first round, I modified the IPv4 address on the team before it was done initializing and it completely messed up the team interface, rendering it useless. Need an example? See below:

Credits

For the closure of this issue, I had the assistance of a gentleman from Intel and another user that had a similar problem:

http://communities.intel.com/message/60941