[Beowulf] PXE Booting and Interface Bonding

[Eric W. Biederman]

"David B. Ritch" <david.ritch at gmail.com> writes:

> What is the best practice for the use of multiple NICs on cluster nodes?
>
> I've found that when I enable Etherchannel bonding in out network
> equipment, PXE booting does not work.  It breaks the initial DHCP
> discover request, presumably because the response may not return to the
> same NIC.  However, bonding the interfaces is a clear win for node
> availability and for performance.
>
> The best solution that I have is to turn off port channels in our
> network equipment, and use Linux kernel bonding, in balance-alb mode. 
> This provides adaptive load balancing by ARP manipulation.

A few years ago I added 802.3ad LAG support to etherboot now gpxe.

When used it negotiates tells the LAG that there is only one member.
You might want to try that. 

Eric