Skip to main content

Adding Interfaces to an HA Team Interface

The information below is a Juniper best practice for adding interfaces to the HA sync team interface, and is simplified by using the the HA Sync Redundancy Plugin. The HA Sync Redundancy plugin adds the ability to include an additional link in the team interface configured as described in Non-Forwarding HA Interfaces. Additionally, the plugin provides the ability to use the HA sync connection (single or dual-member) to send HA fabric traffic by creating a vlan sub-interface, and setting up a KNI interface in a bridge with this sub-interface.

Configuring the Redundant HA Sync Interface

The configuration sample below adds a Linux interface enp0s14f1 to the HA sync team interface.

config

authority

router lshields
name lshields

node lanner7573
name lanner7573

ha-sync-redundancy
redundant-interface enp0s14f1
exit
exit
exit
exit
exit

HA Fabric Over HA Sync

The configuration sample below auto-generates HA fabric interfaces that leverage the existing HA sync connection to transit between the nodes.

config

authority

router lshields
name lshields

ha-sync-redundancy
generate-shared-fabric-interface true
exit
exit
exit
exit

This auto-generates the configuration for a device-interface named ha-fabric on any nodes in the router, each with a network-interface named ha-fabric-intf. The addresses used on these interfaces will be from the network 169.254.252.0/30. The network can be overridden by specifying a different network range for the option fabric-network within the ha-sync-redundancy container.

Use Cases

Within an HA router, the communication that occurs on the HA sync connection is vital to proper operation of the router. In many ways it should be thought of as akin to the backplane of a chassis-based router, despite the fact that it is provided through an Ethernet connection. Due to the importance of this connection to proper functionality, customers often wish to provide redundant connections for this traffic in case of cable or interface failure.

Additionally, there is typically a desire to minimize the number of cables running between two nodes in an HA router, possibly due to lack of physical ports available. This plugin provides the ability to leverage the existing HA sync connection for HA fabric traffic in order to limit the number of physical connections between the two nodes. This can either allow users to avoid the use of three cables when using a redundant HA connection or avoid using two when the hardware does not provide sufficient ports.

Troubleshooting

Config Auto-Generation

When enabling use of the shared fabric interface, this plugin auto-generates configuration for a kni host interface named ha-fabric. If expected configuration is not being generated, please check the following log on the conductor for errors.

/var/log/128technology/plugins/ha-sync-redundancy-generate-configuration.log

Plugin State

The show plugin state command provides useful information for troubleshooting proper performance of the plugin. The summary version of this command shows a simple table indicating the status of the team and/or bridge as well as their individual members. A sample output of a fully working plugin is shown below.

note

If only using one of the two options in this plugin, the output will only contain information for either the team or bridge.

admin@node1.conductor# show plugins state router router1 summary 128T-ha-sync-redundancy
Fri 2021-09-03 20:05:53 UTC
Retrieving state data...
Target: node1.router1

============== ======== ====== ================
Interface Exists Up In Bridge/Team
============== ======== ====== ================
team-ens3 True True N/A
ens3 True True True
ens4 True True True
ha-fabric-br True True N/A
fabric True True True
ha-fabric True True True

Target: node2.router1

============== ======== ====== ================
Interface Exists Up In Bridge/Team
============== ======== ====== ================
team-ens3 True True N/A
ens3 True True True
ens4 True True True
ha-fabric-br True True N/A
fabric True True True
ha-fabric True True True

Retrieved state data.
Completed in 4.12 seconds
admin@node1.conductor#

If there is a False value for any of these fields, further investigation should be undertaken as outlined below.

The show plugin state command can also be issued with a detail option. This option reports the output of the Linux commands brctl show and teamdctl <team name> state which provide additional details of the status of the bridge and team interfaces.

note

If only using one of the two options in this plugin, the output will only contain information for either the team or bridge.

admin@node1.conductor# show plugins state router router1 detail 128T-ha-sync-redundancy
Fri 2021-09-03 20:17:21 UTC
Retrieving state data...

============================================================================
node1.router1
============================================================================
Fabric Status:
bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces
ha-fabric-br 8000.500000020001 no fabric
ha-fabric

Team Status:
ports:
ens3:
ifinfo:
dev_addr: 50:00:00:02:00:01
dev_addr_len: 6
ifindex: 3
ifname: ens3
link:
duplex: full
speed: 1000
up: True
link_watches:
list:
link_watch_0:
delay_down: 0
delay_up: 0
down_count: 1
name: ethtool
up: True
up: True
ens4:
ifinfo:
dev_addr: 50:00:00:02:00:01
dev_addr_len: 6
ifindex: 4
ifname: ens4
link:
duplex: full
speed: 1000
up: True
link_watches:
list:
link_watch_0:
delay_down: 0
delay_up: 0
down_count: 0
name: ethtool
up: True
up: True
runner:
active_port: ens4
setup:
daemonized: False
dbus_enabled: True
debug_level: 0
kernel_team_mode_name: activebackup
pid: 11070
pid_file: /var/run/teamd/team-ens3.pid
runner_name: activebackup
zmq_enabled: False
team_device:
ifinfo:
dev_addr: 50:00:00:02:00:01
dev_addr_len: 6
ifindex: 11
ifname: team-ens3

The sections below contain information on how the plugin orchestrates the setup of the team and bridge interfaces. This information can be used to troubleshoot proper operation of the plugin if these commands show issues with either the team or the bridge.

Plugin Configuration

When configuration is created for this plugin, the conductor creates a configuration file with the appropriate information on each node of the router. This file is located in the directory /var/lib/128technology/plugins/ha-sync-redundancy/ and named config.yaml. A copy of this file named config.yaml.current can be found in this directory if the config was read correctly. This file is used to maintain the last state of the configuration to detect when changes are made so that interfaces no longer needed can be cleaned up. The contents of this file should look as follows (based on the configuration above).

redundant_interface: "enp0s14f0"
ha_fabric_vlan: "1000"
note

It can take several minutes after a commit from the conductor for this file to be generated.

Configuration Handling

Upon generation of the configuration file, a configuration handler is executed. This handler reads the configuration file, sets up the redundant team interface member, as well as setup a KNI namespace script configuration file to handle the vlan interface and bridge creation. This script writes errors to the log file /var/log/128technology/plugins/ha-sync-redundancy.log, providing details if issues arise. The config handler can also be executed manually by running /usr/bin/t128-ha-sync-redundancy-config-handler.

The contents of this file should look similar to what is shown below.

vlan-interfaces:
- name: fabric
base-intf: team-enp10s0f0
vlan-id: 2000
bridges:
- name: ha-fabric-br
kni-intf: ha-fabric
target-intf: fabric

KNI Namespace Script

This portion is only relevant to the configuration of an HA Fabric VLAN.

After the configuration has been handled a configuration file for the namespace scripts is generated at /var/lib/128technology/kni/host/ha-fabric.conf. In addition, symbolic links should be created to the kni namespace scripts in the directory /etc/128technology/plugins/network-scripts/host/ha-fabric as shown below:

[root@lr202006003427 ha-fabric]# ll
total 20
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 69 Aug 30 20:26 init -> /etc/128technology/plugins/network-scripts/default/kni_namespace/init
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 246 Aug 30 20:52 monitoring
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 62 Aug 30 20:26 reinit -> /etc/128technology/plugins/network-scripts/host/ha-fabric/init
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 73 Aug 30 20:26 shutdown -> /etc/128technology/plugins/network-scripts/default/kni_namespace/shutdown
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 72 Aug 30 20:26 startup -> /etc/128technology/plugins/network-scripts/default/kni_namespace/startup
[root@lr202006003427 ha-fabric]#

If these scripts have errors, they will be shown in /var/log/128technology/highway.log. On occasion, setting the log-level to debug will provide additional details of how these scripts are run and errors they generate.