Troubleshooting Issues with Bonded Interfaces

In This Section Troubleshooting Workflow Connectivity Delays on Switches

Troubleshooting Workflow

1. Examine the status of the bond.
2. If there is a problem, see if the physical link is down:
   1. Run this command:
      • In Gaia Clish:

      show cluster bond name <bond_name>

      • In Expert mode:

      cphaprob show_bond <bond_name>

   2. Look for a slave interface that reports the status of the link as no.
   3. Examine the cable connections and other hardware.
   4. Examine the port configuration on the switch.
3. See if a Cluster Member is down:
   • In Gaia Clish:

     show cluster state

   • In Expert mode:

     cphaprob state

   If any of the Cluster Members has a firewall State other than Active, continue with the cphaprob state troubleshooting.

4. View the logs in SmartConsole > Logs & Monitor > Logs.

In a VSX Cluster Member, reboot is needed after these actions on a bond interface:

1. Changing a bond mode.
2. Adding a slave interface into a bond.

   Note - Removing a slave interface does not require reboot.

Connectivity Delays on Switches

When using certain switches, connectivity delays may occur during some internal bond failovers. With the various features that are now included on some switches, it can take close to a minute for a switch to begin servicing a newly connected interface. These are suggestions for reducing the startup time after link failure.

1. Disable auto-negotiation on the relevant interface.
2. On some Cisco switches, enable the PortFast feature.
3. Disable STP on the ports.

Warnings about PortFast

The PortFast feature should never be used on ports that connect to switches or hubs. It is important that the Spanning Tree complete the initialization procedure in these situations. Otherwise, these connections may cause physical loops where packets are continuously forwarded (or even multiply) in such a way that can cause the network to fail.

Sample Configuration of PortFast Feature on a Cisco Switch

The following are the commands necessary to enable PortFast on a Gigabit Ethernet 1/0/15 interface of a Cisco 3750 switch running IOS.

1. Enter configuration mode:

   cisco-3750A# conf t

2. Specify the interface to configure:

   cisco-3750A(config)# interface gigabitethernet1/0/15

3. Set PortFast on this port:

   cisco-3750A(config-if)# spanning-tree portfast

   cisco-3750A(config-if)# end

4. Save the configuration:

   cisco-3750A# write