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jtnire
Asked: 2011-04-26 12:53:35 +0800 CST

Linux bridge redundancy

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I make heavy use of Linux Bridges (brctl) as I have a Xen environment. At the minute, only one physical NIC is connected to the bridge (There are many virtual NICs for the Xen VMs though). In order to get some redundancy working, what steps would I need to take to add another physical NIC to the bridge? This second NIC will be connected to a different switch. Do I need to run a cable between the 2 switches and enable STP?

Please note that the NIC do not have IP assigned to them (however the bridges do).

I do know the commands to add NICs to bridges; my question related to the redundancy aspect of it.

linux networking switch bridge stp

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I think the answer is that you would need to create a bonded interface using a failover configuration where whatever NIC work get's the connection. Then you can make your bridges on top of the bond interfaces instead of directly on the nics.

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  2. Add both interfaces to the bridge, and make sure that spanning tree is not disabled on your switches. Spanning tree should be enabled on Linux by default, but make sure that is not disabled brctl showstp <bridge>.

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