HP UX Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Software manual Mode, Failover Policy, Instance Number, HW Path

NOTE: For HP-UX 11.0 releases, use 100 as the starting instance number.

Mode

The configuration mode of the link aggregate or failover group. Your choice will be determined by the capabilities of the link partner (for example, switch, router, or server) to which the link aggregate physical interfaces will be connected. See your link partner's documentation to determine which modes it supports. Check the mode you want to use. The following choices are available:

FEC_AUTO	Automatically start the FEC protocol on the physical port.
LACP_AUTO	Automatically start LACP on the physical port.
MANUAL	HP APA does not automatically aggregate ports. You must manually add or
	remove ports from a link aggregate.
LAN_MONITOR	The ports are used for a failover group.
Not_Enabled	Create the link aggregate with the Key, Group Capability, or Load Distribution
	Algorithm set to a non-default value, but without any ports. You must add
	ports to enable it.

Failover Policy

The mechanism by which LAN Monitor chooses the active port in a failover group. The following choices are available:

Priority Based	If the active port fails, LAN Monitor chooses the standby link that is UP
	and that has the highest port priority (highest value) to be the new active
	link. For the December 2005 and later releases of HP APA for HP-UX 11i
	v1 (B.11.11.20) and PHNE_33116 (B.11.11.17) patch release.
Cost Based	If the active port fails, LAN Monitor chooses the standby link that is UP
	and has the lowest normalized port cost to be the new active link. This is
	also called proactive failover. See “Proactive Failover” (page 15) for a
	description of proactive failover and “Proactive Failover Examples”
	(page 110) for proactive failover examples.

Check the failover policy you want to use.

Instance Number

The PPA numbers of the ports that will be in the link aggregation or failover group. Enter the numbers on the sheet.

NOTE: Before adding ports to a failover group, you must check link connectivity between the ports.

HW Path

The hardware path to the NIC associated with the port to include in the link aggregate or failover group. A numeric string of hardware components, noted sequentially from the bus address to the device address.

For link aggregates, this is a string in the form LinkAggxx, where xx is the last two digits of the instance number (00 – 49).

This field is provided as a convenience in case you either do not know the PPA number of the port or want a place to capture and save both values.

Interface Type

A short description of the NIC associated with the port. For example, 100Base-TX.

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