FreeNAS & LACP [SOLVED]

[ro55mo]

Before I begin with this topic

1. I am asking for my own curiosity and for educational purposes.
2. I know I will not see a benefit in network performance due to these changes unless I have lots of clients hitting the FreeNAS at the same time.

So I have a FreeNAS based on an ASRock Rack C2750D4I. It has the following network interfaces.

Onboard

2 x Intel i210
1 x Realtek RTL8211E dedicated for IPMI

PCIe slot

1x Intel 82574L

The admin of the FreeNAS is performed through the Intel 82574L on 192.168.0.10

The IPMI is on 192.168.0.8

The switch is a managed Netgear GS108T which does support LACP

IPMI - Switch port 7
FreeNAS admin - switch port 6
Intel i210 - switch port 4 & 5

I have read some (poor) tutorials, the FreeNAS documentation and watched a few videos and I confess am as confused as when I started as how to arrive at a working LAGG interface.

The FreeNAS forums have this thread that says

Ideally a lagg interface should be created from two neighboring interfaces of the same type, configured identically, without any IP addresses, just options “up”.

So I have done this and configured LAG membership on the switch, although if I change the LAG type to LACP it changes the link state to down.

So what do I need to do now?

Ideally I want to use the LAG for data transfer from and to the FreeNAS and just use the management interface for admin.

Do I need to use a VLAN anywhere? Separate subnets? IP aliases?

Networking is not my strong suit. Any advice in my little educational journey is gratefully received.

[Dexter_Kane]

I find LACP to be pretty unstable and generally ill use static LAGs as much as possible.

Does freenas have any options for setting the lag type? You want to make sure both the switch and freenas are set to LACP or static, whichever you want to use. Also, I’d suggest only having one link physically connected until you have it setup to avoid issues.

And if there’s an option for the hash type on the switch and/or in freenas set it to IP (or IP and port or layer3/4 or whatever it calls it) rather than MAC. Using the mac address for the hash will only give you fail over and not more speed.

[Dexter_Kane]

Oh, and yeah I’m not sure you actually can have two interfaces on the same subnet, you’ll probably need to have your management interface on a different VLAN.

[Mdgtman91]

Plug a monitor into FreeNAS and set the LAGG that way, it’s honestly a lot easier.
You will have to select the existing interfaces and delete them, then create LAGG.
That will then show up as 1 interface where you can set a static IP and stuff.
This must be set as well as the switch to work correctly. You look good on the switch side.

[ro55mo]

I was considering this as I can do it via the ICMP page. Thanks for the confirmation.

[ro55mo]

@Mdgtman91

That worked like a charm. Had to set LACP on both sides. The switch had static as an option but FreeNAS does not.

Only oddity is that as per the last screen shot in my first post the LAG state shows “Link down” even though everything is working now.

Peak transfer is around 930Mb (either way) which is to be expected as only one NIC will be used at a time.

Maybe if I end up running a lot of VMs in the FreeNAS I will see a benefit.

Anyway, mission successful. Thanks for the advice.