Configure NIC bonding

You can configure L2 templates for the management cluster to set up a bond network interface for the PXE and management network.

This configuration must be applied to the bootstrap templates, before you run the bootstrap script to deploy the management cluster.

..admonition:: Configuration requirements for NIC bonding

• Add at least two physical interfaces to each host in your management cluster.

• Connect at least two interfaces per host to an Ethernet switch that supports Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) port groups and LACP fallback.

• Configure an LACP group on the ports connected to the NICs of a host.

• Configure the LACP fallback on the port group to ensure that the host can boot over the PXE network before the bond interface is set up on the host operating system.

• Configure server BIOS for both NICs of a bond to be PXE-enabled.

• If the server does not support booting from multiple NICs, configure the port of the LACP group that is connected to the PXE-enabled NIC of a server to be the primary port. With this setting, the port becomes active in the fallback mode.

• Configure the ports that connect servers to the PXE network with the PXE VLAN as native or untagged.

For reference configuration of network fabric in a baremetal-based cluster, see Network fabric.

To configure a bond interface that aggregates two interfaces for the PXE and management network:

1. In kaas-bootstrap/templates/bm/ipam-objects.yaml.template:

   1. Verify that only the following parameters for the declaration of {{nic 0}} and {{nic 1}} are set, as shown in the example below:

      dhcp4 dhcp6

      match set-name

      Remove other parameters.

   2. Verify that the declaration of the bond interface bond0 has the interfaces parameter listing both Ethernet interfaces.

   3. Verify that the node address in the PXE network (ip "bond0:mgmt-pxe" in the below example) is bound to the bond interface or to the virtual bridge interface tied to that bond.

      Caution

      No VLAN ID must be configured for the PXE network from the host side.

   4. Configure bonding options using the parameters field. The only mandatory option is mode. See the example below for details.

      Note

      You can set any mode supported by netplan and your hardware.

      Important

      Bond monitoring is disabled in Ubuntu by default. However, Mirantis highly recommends enabling it using Media Independent Interface (MII) monitoring by setting the mii-monitor-interval parameter to a non-zero value. For details, see Linux documentation: bond monitoring.

2. Verify your configuration using the following example:

   kind: L2Template
   metadata:
     name: kaas-mgmt
     ...
   spec:
     ...
     l3Layout:
       - subnetName: kaas-mgmt
         scope:      namespace
     npTemplate: |
       version: 2
       ethernets:
         {{nic 0}}:
           dhcp4: false
           dhcp6: false
           match:
             macaddress: {{mac 0}}
           set-name: {{nic 0}}
         {{nic 1}}:
           dhcp4: false
           dhcp6: false
           match:
             macaddress: {{mac 1}}
           set-name: {{nic 1}}
       bonds:
         bond0:
           interfaces:
             - {{nic 0}}
             - {{nic 1}}
           parameters:
             mode: 802.3ad
             mii-monitor-interval: 100
           dhcp4: false
           dhcp6: false
           addresses:
             - {{ ip "bond0:mgmt-pxe" }}
       vlans:
         k8s-lcm:
           id: SET_VLAN_ID
           link: bond0
           addresses:
             - {{ ip "k8s-lcm:kaas-mgmt" }}
           nameservers:
             addresses: {{ nameservers_from_subnet "kaas-mgmt" }}
           routes:
             - to: 0.0.0.0/0
               via: {{ gateway_from_subnet "kaas-mgmt" }}
       ...
   

3. Proceed to bootstrap your management cluster as described in Deploy a management cluster using CLI.