LAGG benefits?

[Robert Thomspon]

Hey guys, probably a dumb question... but, is there any actual benefit to LAGGing my TrueNAS machine? (home server with a few outwardly facing apps). Internet connection is commicasts 1000mb/s (so 100MB down, 3MB up). the rest of the network runs on gigabit. But i also have 4 open network interfaces on the NAS and lots of open slots on the punch panel).

I was also considering if i should do the same on my PfSense box (as it has 3 more open lines)

there is no bad advice :)

 

[jgreco]

There are minor downsides and it doesn't work like you might expect. The way it really works is covered at

Resource - LACP ... friend or foe?

Too many LACP discussions lately. Here's what you need to know. 1) Link aggregation groups are an interesting way to boost network throughput. They're typically managed by a protocol called Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP). Link...

www.truenas.com

If those things sound fine to you, and you just want to do it anyways, then it's absolutely fine and dandy to LACP away. I run lots of systems with LACP, some with just failover, etc.

 

[Robert Thomspon]

There are minor downsides and it doesn't work like you might expect. The way it really works is covered at

Resource - LACP ... friend or foe?

Too many LACP discussions lately. Here's what you need to know. 1) Link aggregation groups are an interesting way to boost network throughput. They're typically managed by a protocol called Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP). Link...

www.truenas.com

If those things sound fine to you, and you just want to do it anyways, then it's absolutely fine and dandy to LACP away. I run lots of systems with LACP, some with just failover, etc.

From the sounds of it (here and over at PfSense) it sounds like in my case, there would be very little benefit past redundancy, and possible to cause more problems than it's worth unless/until I move up to a 10gb/s network.

 

[jgreco]

My general feeling and first instinct when people come asking about LACP 1G is "wow you'd really probably enjoy 10G more".

I wrote the LACP bit years ago when the 10G stuff was a good bit more pricey than it is now, even on the used market. If you don't mind the noise. getting yourself something like a Dell 5524 (2x SFP+) for $100 off eBay and then a Chelsio T520-CR and some optics and fiber means you get a 10G NAS and one more 10G device, a bunch of high quality 1G ports, etc. If you need PoE, the 5524P is available. But this is not a "quiet" switch. It's not the noisiest either.

I realize not everyone wants to pump lots of cash into their networking gear, and if you already have LACP-capable 1G gear, it probably won't HURT you to run LACP 1G. I would not recommend getting any NEW gear to support LACP 1G though.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I run all my home servers - CORE, OPNsense, virtualised SCALE and even ESXi - with LACP or the weird ESXi channel bundling, just to toy with the FreeBSD and Linux networking stack and potential kinks. Other end is a classic Cisco IOS switch. That very closely resembles the production setup @work.

 

[HoneyBadger]

It's worth noting that while LAGG works lovely for anything that's running a NAS or general data protocol, you should use MPIO in an iSCSI environment instead.