[olug] link aggregation question

[Christopher Cashell]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Sheldon, Roger W <
Roger.Sheldon at firstdata.com> wrote:

> Looking for a switch to support Link Aggregation 802.3ad (LACP) to trunk
> IP on NAS. Any recommends?
>

Most managed switches will support 802.3ad.  What other requirements do you
have?  How many ports do you need?  Is this for home or business
environment?  Is this a one-off for the NAS, or will you be using it for
anything else?  Do you need/want Jumbo Frame support (can improve
performance for NAS for some workloads), and if so, do the NAS and servers
(and their NICs) support it?

I haven't used them personally, but a friend of mine mentioned a small
Netgear "smart" switch he purchased for home use a little while back.  I
think it was 8 port, gigabit, and I know he said it supposed the basic
common managed switch functions like VLANs and LACP.  I seem to recall it
running a little under $100.

For home use, something like that (and I'm sure there are dozens of similar
options from other vendors) would probably be a good bet.  It's also pretty
easy to find slightly older models of more business oriented network
hardware available used that would easily handle port aggregation, too.

For business use, there are a lot more considerations that can come into
play.

Note: If this is primarily intended for traffic between 1 host and 1 NAS
device, you are unlikely to see much performance improvement from the
aggregated links.  With multiple servers accessing it, you'll start seeing
the benefit.


> Roger Sheldon
>

-- 
Christopher