Using bonding on software served FCOE interfaces in a multipath SAN boot configuration may experience I/O errors and can hang on boot depending on the chosen path

Solution In Progress - Updated -

Issue

  • If software defined FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) is in place, the system is booting from SAN with the operating system disks in a multipath configuration, when bonding takes over the slave interfaces it can cause I/O errors and fail to boot.
  • In one particular case with INFINIDAT storage arrays, enabling active/active in the multipath configuration will land up with active paths being failed when the bonding starts.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Scenario

  • Boot from SAN
  • Software defined FCoE
  • device-mapper-multipath enabled for FCoE LUNs
  • Bonding/LAG or Team Ethernet interface configured for FCoE connections
  • Any system where fcoe-utils and lldpad is installed and required to provide the FIP and Virtual FC interfaces.

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