VIPA and EtherChannel

[dman7777777]

Let's say I had an AIX box and the box had 2 ethernet cards in it. Let's say I wanted to switch out one of the ethernet cards for a new one. What would be the point of making a VIPA for it to point to the ethernet card not being replaced when I could just use etherchannel and have that ethernet card take all the traffic?

 

[khalidaaa]

Ok, to my understanding, when you use etherchannel (of two ethernets), you would assign the IP address on the third etherchannel logical ent, so you will have one interface by the end of the day. But in the case of VIPA you can have multiple interfaces each with its separate IP pointing to the physical interfaces.

Have a look into ogniemi nice comments in this link:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1424264&page=8

Both will provide redundancy but VIPA is more flexible!

Regards,
Khalid

 

[khalidaaa]

Etherchannel is more for boosting bandwidth... VIPA is more for
redundancy.

Have a look into this link as well:

http://www.mydatabasesupport.com/forums/aix/152569-how-have-reduntant-ip-aix-server-5-2-a.html

Regards,
Khalid

 

[dman7777777]

Thanks, that last link was really helpfull. It appears to me that etherchannel is favored and disregards the need for vipa. ie- have 2 adaptors and combine them to make one logical adaptor with one logical ip address. so if one fails in this ethernet config the other takes over.

 

[khalidaaa]

Glad it helped

Regards,
Khalid

 

[dman7777777]

Correction... The example above i took from the last link in which the poster called it etherchannel. BUT, I just found this article

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infoc...mmadmn/doc/commadmndita/tcpip_vipa_sample.htm

which shows the same example and they do not mention etherchannel but only vipa. so, it still appears to me that vipa and etherchannel do the same thing(strictly speaking of redundancy). I don't think etherchannel uses a virtual address in it's redundancy configuration, though. Maybe the differences can be thought of as how they are set up but same end result.

 

[khalidaaa]

Yes you are right! Both provides redundancies but VIPA is more flexible!

View this link and you will know what i mean:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infoc...ommadmn/doc/commadmndita/tcpip_vipa_intro.htm

Regards,
Khalid

 

[raylin]

with etherchannel you have redundancy only at the network adapter level because the etherchannel ( cicsco/ibm construct ) can only be built on a single network box and therefore you have a single point of failure .