Link aggregation is a method of bundling interfaces together to act as one for increased bandwith and/or failover. One of most used protocols, next to a couple of proprietary ones, for controlling such a channel bond is LACP, the Link Aggregation Control Protocol.

1. Configuring LACP on Dell S4810

Let’s assume, we want to bond two 10G Ethernet ports together, namely TenGigabitEthernet 0/32 and TenGigabitEthernet 0/33

S4810(conf)#interface range tengigabitethernet 0/32 , tengigabitethernet 0/33
S4810(conf-if-range-te-0/32,te-0/33)#port-channel-protocol LACP                                       
S4810(conf-if-range-te-0/32,te-0/33-lacp)#  port-channel 9 mode active                                     
S4810(conf-if-range-te-0/32,te-0/33-lacp)#show conf
!
interface TenGigabitEthernet 0/32
 description po9 uplink to Server47
 no ip address
 flowcontrol rx on tx off 
!  
 port-channel-protocol LACP 
  port-channel 9 mode active 
 no shutdown
!
interface TenGigabitEthernet 0/33
 description po9 uplink to Server47
 no ip address
 flowcontrol rx on tx off 
!  
 port-channel-protocol LACP 
  port-channel 9 mode active 
 no shutdown

Next, the port-channel interface needs to be configured as layer 2 port and activated afterwards:

S4810(conf)#interface port-channel 9
S4810(conf-if-po-9)#description Uplink to Server47
S4810(conf-if-po-9)#switchport 
S4810(conf-if-po-9)#no shutdown 
S4810(conf-if-po-9)#show config 
!
interface Port-channel 9
 description Uplink to Server47
 no ip address
 switchport
 no shutdown

It’s always good practice to also change the description. Depending on your configuration, you might want to change the vlan settings for this newly created port-channel as well:

S4810(conf)#interface vlan 11
S4810(conf-if-vl-11)#untagged port-channel 9
S4810(conf-if-vl-11)#show config            
!
interface Vlan 11
 description VLAN11-LAN
 ip address 10.11.1.10/16
 tagged TenGigabitEthernet 0/8-13
 tagged Port-channel 1-5,11,13-14
 untagged TenGigabitEthernet 0/14,19-20,23,38,46
 untagged Port-channel 9
 ip helper-address 10.10.10.1
 no shutdown

Of course, depending on the actual network topology, your mileage might vary here.

Note that the port-channel will stay in a ‘down’ state until it can exchange LACPDUs with the remote end:

S4810(conf)#do show interfaces port-channel 9 brief
Codes: L - LACP Port-channel

    LAG  Mode  Status       Uptime      Ports          
L   9    L2L3  down         00:00:00    

2. Configuring LACP on OpenIndiana

First, disable the NWAM (Network Auto Magic) service:

# svcadm disable svc:/network/physical:nwam
# svcadm enable svc:/network/physical:default

To list the available physical ports, use dladm

root@Server47:~# dladm show-phys
LINK         MEDIA                STATE      SPEED  DUPLEX    DEVICE
myri10ge1    Ethernet             down       10000  full      myri10ge1
myri10ge0    Ethernet             down       10000  full      myri10ge0
bnx2         Ethernet             down       0      unknown   bnx2
bnx0         Ethernet             up         1000   full      bnx0
bnx1         Ethernet             down       0      unknown   bnx1
bnx3         Ethernet             down       0      unknown   bnx3

To create an aggregate device with two links (myri10ge0 and myri10ge1) in LACP mode (-L active) with and L2 failover policy (Determines the outgoing link by hashing the MAC (L2) header of each packet), run:

dladm create-aggr -l myri10ge0 -l myri10ge1 -L active -P L2 aggr1

You can use dladm show-aggr to see the current state:

root@Server47:~# dladm show-aggr
LINK            POLICY   ADDRPOLICY           LACPACTIVITY  LACPTIMER   FLAGS
aggr1           L2       auto                 active        short       -----

Next, create an interface aggr1:

root@Server47:~# ipadm create-if aggr1
root@Server47:~# ipadm show-if
IFNAME     STATE    CURRENT      PERSISTENT
lo0        ok       -m-v------46 ---
bnx0       ok       bm--------46 -46
aggr1      down     bm--------46 -46

You should now see that the LACP link is established on the layer 2 switch:

S4810(conf)#do show interfaces port-channel 9 brief
Codes: L - LACP Port-channel

    LAG  Mode  Status       Uptime      Ports          
L   9    L2L3  up           00:00:00    Te 0/32    (Up)
                                        Te 0/33    (Up)

The last thing left to do is to create an IP address on top of the aggr1 interface:

root@Server47:~# ipadm create-addr -T static -a 10.11.20.6/16 aggr1/v4

Again, depending on your topology, you might want to add/edit you default route to go over the aggragate interface.