Using RouteOptions

The RouteOptions attribute is useful only when the default gateway is your own host.

For example, if the default gateway and lan0 are both set to 11.236.99.248, the output of the netstat -rn command from the routing table resembles:

If the RouteOptions attribute is not set and lan0 fails, the MultiNICA agent migrates the base IP address to another NIC (such as lan1). The default route is no longer configured because it was associated with lan0. The display from the routing table resembles:

If the RouteOptions attribute defines the default route, the default route is reconfigured on the system. For example:

Sample Configuration: MultiNICA and IPMultiNIC

In the following example, two machines, sysa and sysb, each have a pair of network interfaces, lan0 and lan3. The two interfaces, lan0 and lan3, have the same base, or physical, IP address. However, the addresses on different hosts can differ. Note the lines beginning Device@sysa and Device@sysb; the use of different physical addresses shows how to localize an attribute for a particular host.

The MultiNICA resource fails over only the physical IP address to the backup NIC during a failure. The logical IP addresses are configured by the IPMultiNIC agent. The resources ip1 and ip2, shown in the following example, have the Address attribute which contains the logical IP address. If a NIC fails on sysa, the physical IP address and the two logical IP addresses fails over from lan0 to lan3. If lan3 fails, the address fails back to lan0 if lan0 is reconnected.

However, if both the NICs on sysa are disconnected, the MultiNICA and IPMultiNIC resources work in tandem to fault the group on sysa. The entire group now fails over to sysb.

If you have more than one group using the MultiNICA resource, the second group can use a Proxy resource to point to the MultiNICA resource in the first group. This prevents redundant monitoring of the NICs on the same system. The IPMultiNIC resource is always made dependent on the MultiNICA resource. See IPMultiNIC Agent.