Link Aggregation

It is common to use link aggregation (LAG) or bond interfaces to increase reliability, availability, or bandwidth of networking devices. Virtio-net devices support this mode via DPU-side LAG configurations.

To configure the virtio-net-controller in LAG mode must follow a specific procedure due to the dependency on mlx5 RDMA device:

1. Stop the virtio-net-controller to avoid resource leakage (which would be caused by LAG destroying the existing mlx5 RDMA device and creating a new bond RDMA device).

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   [dpu]# systemctl stop virtio-net-controller.service
           

2. Configure the LAG interface for two uplink interfaces from the DPU side. Refer to the " Link Aggregation " page in NVIDIA BlueField BSP documentation for detailed steps.

   Note

   The virtio-net-controller service starts by default. If DPU is rebooted during LAG configuration, it is necessary to stop the controller before creating a bond interfaces from the DPU side.

3. Update the controller configuration file to use bond interface.

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   [dpu]# cat /opt/mellanox/mlnx_virtnet/virtnet.conf
   {
     "ib_dev_lag": "mlx5_bond_0",
     "ib_dev_for_static_pf": "mlx5_bond_0",
     "is_lag": 1,
   }
           

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   Refer to page "Configuration File" for details.

4. Start the controller for the new configuration to take effect.

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   [dpu]# systemctl start virtio-net-controller.service