Analyzing Problems When a Sun Systems Network Interface Does Not Fail Over or Fail Back in an IP Multipathing (IPMP) Configuration (Doc ID 1019110.1)

Last updated on APRIL 01, 2024

Applies to:

Purpose

IPMP is designed to move network traffic from a failing network interface to to a working network interface. It does this by taking down the failing network interface and plumbing up a virtual interface on another working network interface. When the original interface has been repaired, the new virtual interface will fail back to the original network interface. To accomplish this, there is a daemon (in.mpathd) that monitors the health of the designated interfaces.

Symptoms:

a. interface in an IPMP group does not fail over as described above when:

-the "if_mpadm -d (interface-name)" command is used to simulate a fail over by changing the operational status
-an interface that is not status "STANDBY" is disconnected from the switchport or the link goes down.
-the on link router fails to respond or is late to respond to ICMP probes (probe-based config only)

b. interface in an IPMP group does not fail back as described above when:

-the "if_mpadm -r (interface-name)" command is used to reverse a simulated failover by changing the operational status.
-an interface that is not status "STANDBY" is re-connected to the switchport or the link comes up.
-the on link router responds to ICMP probes (probe-based config only)

Purpose/Scope: This document provides steps and actions to resolve issues where IPMP interfaces show status "FAILED".

If you need assistance on problems related to IPMP configuration, please refer to:
<Document 1020085.1> Analyzing problems when trying to configure IP Multipathing (IPMP)

If you need assistance on problems related to IPMP/in.mpathd errors, please refer to:
<Document 1020155.1> Analyzing errors for IP Multipathing (IPMP) configurations

If you need assistance on problems related to interfaces in "FAILED" status in an IPMP group, please refer to:
<Document 1020233.1> Analyzing Problems with Network Interfaces Showing "FAILED" in ifconfig -a Output


Available Documentation:
in.mpathd(1M)

The official Sun IP Multipathing documentation is found on Oracle Documentation Index

As of this writing, the most current documentation relating to using IPMP is:
System Administration Guide: IP Services

Solaris[TM] 10 System Administrator Collection > System Administration Guide: IP Services > IPMP

Other related information (man pages):

icmp(7P)
dladm(1M)
ifconfig(1M)
if_mpadm(1M)
kstat(1M)
ndd(1M)
netstat(1M)
ps(1M)
grep(1)
snoop(1m)
tail(1)
pgrep,pkill(1)

blogs.sun.com entries:

http://blogs.oracle.com/sunay/entry/solaris_networking_the_magic_revealed

GLDv3 implementation in Solaris 10

IP/IPMP in the Solaris 10 network enviroment

Troubleshooting Steps