Need help with LACP

[reedjasonf]

Here the situation:

I am part of an organization at a University and we own our own share drive and maintain it ourselves. We use FreeNAS of course (version 8.3.0-RELEASE-p1) The problem is that our network is only 10/100 Mbps and the campus refuses to give us any better networking capabilities despite our switches and routers being GigE capable. We have decided to upgrade the hardware of our share drive and I am thinking of the possibility of getting a second GigE card so that we can use a LACP Link Aggregation. I have already checked the switch documentation and it does support LACP. Here is my question: Will we be able to set this up without having access to the switch's programming? Will LACP set itself up as long as it's configured correctly in FreeNAS?

We have very little control over our network so before we invest money in another NIC I don't want to have to fight with campus I.T. over this issue as well.

 

[cyberjock]

LACP didn't work for me at all without setting up the appropriate settings on the switch. Your mileage may vary though. Honestly, if you are stuck with 100Mb connections I'd just use 2 IPs with 2 NICs and give some people 1 IP and other people the other.

 

[cheezehead]

LACP requires the switch to be configured for LACP on the ports you want to team. The cutover will cause a momentary outage. Another thing is that while the switches are Gigabit, are the backhaul links Gigabit? (If not there wouldn't be a point). "Load balance" would be a simpler config, not requiring any switch reconfiguration.

PM if you want to go into some more specifics for implementation in higher ed.