Combining Network Cards for Speed

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SBSP

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If i have 2 1Gig Nics on Server can i combine them to deliver 2Gb/s ?

I want to try something. (Not for work , Its just an experiment)

I already created a Linux NAS Device with Raid 1 on 2X 1TB drives then created a LVM Filesystem ontop of that array.

Then Split the 1TB array into 2 ,
512 GB for Real data and 512 for snapshot data.

So Now i want to take 2 network cards on the Linux system combine them to deliver 2GB /s.

Is it possible , Do you think the switch will also have to be configured to allow this to work ?
 
What you want to do is called Teaming, the current NICs will need to support teaming between them. Generally you shouldn't have to configure anything on the switch as you are doing teaming and not load balancing.

What NICs are they?

Server 2012 supports cross vendor NIC teaming, so you can team any NICs without having to worry about their drivers supporting it.
 
grim said:
What you want to do is called Teaming, the current NICs will need to support teaming between them. Generally you shouldn't have to configure anything on the switch as you are doing teaming and not load balancing.

What NICs are they?

Server 2012 supports cross vendor NIC teaming, so you can team any NICs without having to worry about their drivers supporting it.
Click to expand...

Its an HP server i have laying around , HP DL380 G6 with a 16 core CPU and 2 Nics, I know the HP software supports Teaming.
in the past i teamed them.

but now i want to do this on linux.
 
Basically this is what i want to do.

Have 2 servers, VMware ESXI and a Linux NAS device.

Then create the Vmware Datastore on the NAS device , and compare performance when the Datastore was on the actual Vmware server.

So basically the Vmware Server's harddrive is over the Network.

I know this is possible as our live environments NAS drive has 8 Nics and we have 2 Vmware server which each has 4 Nics and all of them is used , The Cisco switch has also been configured for this.
 
SBSP said:
Basically this is what i want to do.

Have 2 servers, VMware ESXI and a Linux NAS device.

Then create the Vmware Datastore on the NAS device , and compare performance when the Datastore was on the actual Vmware server.

So basically the Vmware Server's harddrive is over the Network.

I know this is possible as our live environments NAS drive has 8 Nics and we have 2 Vmware server which each has 4 Nics and all of them is used , The Cisco switch has also been configured for this.
Click to expand...

[Edit] and the motive behind this is, If it work and there is no performance impact i want to take a live snapshot of the data.
then run the Snapshotted VMs to see if they are still ok,

There is one problem with this, I think the More LVM snapshot you have the slower the system becomes.
 
SBSP said:
Its an HP server i have laying around , HP DL380 G6 with a 16 core CPU and 2 Nics, I know the HP software supports Teaming.
in the past i teamed them.

but now i want to do this on linux.
Click to expand...

You'll have to look for linux drivers for those NICs that support teaming
 
grim said:
You'll have to look for linux drivers for those NICs that support teaming
Click to expand...

Ok cool, I will check it out.

LVM is pretty cool, It freezes, snapshot, unfreezes the system in 2 Secs, which is a 100GB.
 
I dont have a Link, I have been playing around with LVM for a while now.

so I kind of made my own notes. at some point in life i created a guide on blogger, My Blogging capabilities Suck so i never really carried on with the blogging thing.

http://dis-tegnies-ge***.blogspot.com/2012/04/creating-snapshots-with-lvm-linux.html

LVM = Linux Volume manager.
Its more like a filesystem you create in LVM mode which you then create EXt3 Partitions ontop of that,
You can then snapshot huge amounts of data in very little time.

With a Few cron Jobs you can create multiple LVM snapshots and for use for onsite backups,

Check it out if you want.
 
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