[Beowulf] PXE Booting and Interface Bonding

[David B. Ritch]

Eric,

Thank you - that sounds like a good idea.  However, I'm not sure that
we'll have an opportunity to replace the bootloader on our
motherboards.  I'd love to see that become standard!

Is gPXE widely used?  How else would one approach this?

Thanks!

dbr

On 3/20/2010 3:20 PM, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> "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
>
>
>