How can I have true HA in AIX 5.3 when using 802.3ad Link Aggregation
with multiple switches ?

My Lan team usually require downtime to do network upgrades and changes
so most servers are dual homed to a pair of switches with vlans on both
and its up to systems group to configure the servers to failover fail
back during switch upgrades or failure on Windows we use NIC teaming,
and Solaris we use IP Multipathing where one ip address floats back and
forth to the active interface so access to the servers is always
available in case of nic or switch failure.

From what I read in the AIX redbooks Etherchannel does not seem to
provide HA for me just performance given the fact you cant etherchannel
between seperate switches, so I'm guessing their must be some other
feature or tool i'm not aware of.

Thanks.

--
Unix Systems Engineer
The City of New York
Dept. of Information Technology
http://www.nyc.gov/doitt
rbrown[(@)]doitt.nyc.gov
http://www.rodrickbrown.com

Sounds strange but you can create a single NIC "etherchannel" that is
connected to 1 switch. Then use Network Interface Backup (NIB) to provide a
backup link to your etherchannel. Don`t know if this works with HACMP but it
works fine on non-hacmp servers.
Checkout Network Interface Backup on the IBM sites or the Redbooks - AIX
Differences Guides V5.1 to 5.3 (www.redbooks.ibm.com)

"Rodrick Brown" <rbrown[@]doitt.nyc.gov> wrote in message
news:2004103000010416807%rbrown@doittnycgov...
>
> How can I have true HA in AIX 5.3 when using 802.3ad Link Aggregation
> with multiple switches ?
>
> My Lan team usually require downtime to do network upgrades and changes
> so most servers are dual homed to a pair of switches with vlans on both
> and its up to systems group to configure the servers to failover fail
> back during switch upgrades or failure on Windows we use NIC teaming,
> and Solaris we use IP Multipathing where one ip address floats back and
> forth to the active interface so access to the servers is always
> available in case of nic or switch failure.
>
> From what I read in the AIX redbooks Etherchannel does not seem to
> provide HA for me just performance given the fact you cant etherchannel
> between seperate switches, so I'm guessing their must be some other
> feature or tool i'm not aware of.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Unix Systems Engineer
> The City of New York
> Dept. of Information Technology
> http://www.nyc.gov/doitt
> rbrown[(@)]doitt.nyc.gov
> http://www.rodrickbrown.com
>