NIC Teaming / Link Aggregation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i-QSOYpqh_zvcupmUlXdyajjRJs0xWpL/view?usp=sharing

1. Understanding NIC Teaming

Key Concepts

NIC Teaming (Link Aggregation): Combines multiple physical NICs into one logical interface
Benefits:
- Increased bandwidth: Aggregate throughput of all NICs
- Redundancy: Failover if one NIC fails
- Load balancing: Distribute traffic across NICs
Common Use Cases:
- Data centers
- High-availability servers
- Network-intensive applications

Teaming Runners (Modes)

Runner	Purpose	Use Case
`activebackup`	Only one NIC active (failover)	Critical redundancy
`roundrobin`	Packets rotated across NICs	Max bandwidth
`loadbalance`	Hash-based distribution	Balanced performance
`broadcast`	All packets sent on all NICs	Specialized networks

💡 RHEL 8 Note:

Uses teamd daemon (not legacy bonding) for better integration with NetworkManager.

2. Installing and Preparing

Install Teamd Package

# Check if installed
rpm -qa | grep teamd

# Install if missing
sudo dnf install teamd -y

Verify Network Interfaces

# Check available interfaces
nmcli dev status

# Attach 2+ network interfaces in VM (e.g., ens224, ens256)

3. Creating NIC Team

Step 1: Create Team Master

# Create team with active-backup runner
nmcli con add type team con-name team0 ifname team0 \\\\
  config '{"runner":{"name":"activebackup"}}'

# Configure IP address
nmcli con modify team0 \\\\
  ipv4.addresses 192.168.227.140/24 \\\\
  ipv4.gateway 192.168.227.1 \\\\
  ipv4.dns 8.8.8.8 \\\\
  ipv4.method manual \\\\
  connection.autoconnect yes