Managing HP Serviceguard for Linux Ninth Edition, April 2009

Figure 3-19 Bonded NICs After Failure
Various combinations of Ethernet card types (single or dual-ported) and bond groups
are possible, but it is vitally important to remember that at least two physical cards (or
physically separate on-board LAN interfaces) must be used in any combination of
channel bonds to avoid a single point of failure for heartbeat connections.
Bonding for Load Balancing
It is also possible to configure bonds in load balancing mode, which allows all slaves
to transmit data in parallel, in an active/active arrangement. In this case, high availability
is provided by the fact that the bond still continues to function (with less throughput)
if one of the component LANs should fail. The user should check the Bonding
documentation to determine if the hardware configuration must use Ethernet switches
such as the HP Procurve switch, which supports trunking of switch ports. The bonding
driver configuration must specify mode 0 for the bond type.
An example of this type of configuration is shown in Figure 3-20.
How the Network Manager Works 77