Avamar: Understanding the Avamar Gen4s Network Configuration

• All nodes (storage and utility) should have the same connection as in the figure below
• Utility and Storage nodes connected through BOND0 (eth0+eth2) to the external customer switches
• Utility and Storage nodes are connected through BOND1 (eth1+eth3) to the Internal Switches (Switch-A + Switch-B)
• The accelerator node does not connect to internal switch

• Bonds can be either configured as Load Balancing or Active-Passive (but Avamar only supports Active-Passive).
  • Load Balancing: The network traffic is equally balanced over the Network Interface Controllers (NICs) of the machine
  • Active Passive: There is one Network Interface Controller (NIC) active while another NIC is asleep. If the active NIC goes down, another NIC becomes active. This supports fault tolerance
  • Active-Backup gives fault tolerance without load balancing and sends all packets through the single active interface. The interface changes only if the active interface fails.

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond1

Example of a Load-Balancing Bond (Not supported in Avamar):

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond1 | grep Mode 

Bonding Mode: adaptive load balancing

Example of an Active-Backup Bond:

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond1 | grep Mode

Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)

For high-availability configurations plus replication and management traffic options:

A dedicated network can be configured for outgoing replication or Administration traffic as per the figure below:

Configuring the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Port:

• Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) is remote management application software
• On an Avamar node, it is a service run on each node to provide tools to monitor, troubleshoot, and potentially make repairs over the customer network
• RMM can be configured as a Shared Port or Dedicated Port

The figure below is an example of a dedicated port:

• If RMM4 functionality is used and set to shared, the default shared port is NIC1 (eth0) on each node.

To check RMM settings, use the commands below for the appropriate channel

For shared port (channel 1):

mapall --user=root --noerror --all+ 'ipmitool lan print 1 | egrep "Address|Mask|Gateway" | egrep -v "MAC|Backup" '

-- Or --

mapall --noerror --user=root --all+ 'hostname && ipmitool lan print 1 | grep "IP\|Mask" |grep -v "Header\|Source"' 

For dedicated port (channel 3):

mapall --user=root --noerror --all+ 'ipmitool lan print 3 | egrep "Address|Mask|Gateway" | egrep -v "MAC|Backup" ' 

-- Or --

mapall --noerror --user=root --all+ 'hostname && ipmitool lan print 3 | grep "IP\|Mask" |grep -v "Header\|Source"'

• For more information regarding the Network configurations, check the articles below:
• For Gen4 Single Node grid: Avamar Data-Store Gen4 Single Node Customer Installation Guide (Page 34)
• For Gen4 Multi-Node grid: Avamar Data-Store Gen4 Multi Node Customer Installation Guide (Page 45)
• For Gen4s Single and Multi-Node grid: Avamar Data-Store Gen4S Comprehensive Reference Guide (Chapter 3, Page 29)