Hi, Kent. You don't need to use bonded NICs. If you only have one NIC configured on your XenServer host, CloudStack should use it for all traffic by default. You can manually configure the traffic labels in CloudStack if you want to be sure.
Configuring NIC bonds and segmenting the traffic can add redundancy and/or performance, so it is worth looking into. There are various options but usually it is best to have storage traffic on it's own NIC or bond. For the other types, try to spread the traffic out so one NIC or bond is not over-utilized. If you do enable bonding, be sure to read the XenServer and CloudStack documentation carefully. Bonding configuration is an area where mistakes are frequently made. This is more of an issue with a pool of several hosts, so don't worry about it if you only have a single host. Best regards, Kirk On 08/09/2013 01:11 PM, KENT ORTELL JOHNSON wrote: > If I am using one NIC do I need to bond my private, public, and storage > networks to it? > Section 8.2.10.4 of the documentation mentions NIC bonding for XenServer, > which I am using for all host. > It says all NIC bonding is optional, so I wonder if all traffic will flow > properly without me doing any network bonding. > > I am using one NIC currently but this may not be the best design. My machine > has six NICs but I am only using one while I do proof of concept. Is there a > recommended bonding template or scenario? > > > Here is the section from the documentation for reference: > 8.2.10.4. NIC Bonding for XenServer (Optional) > XenServer supports Source Level Balancing (SLB) NIC bonding. Two NICs can be > bonded together to carry public, private, and guest traffic, or some > combination of these. Separate storage networks are also possible. Here are > some example supported configurations: > > 2 NICs on private, 2 NICs on public, 2 NICs on storage > 2 NICs on private, 1 NIC on public, storage uses management network > 2 NICs on private, 2 NICs on public, storage uses management network > 1 NIC for private, public, and storage > > All NIC bonding is optional. > > Kent Johnson > University of Utah > David Eccles School of Business > Graduate Student in Information Systems >
