Today, after yet another service interruption from a failed NIC, I realized the obvious, that I should have redundant or at least more reliable network interfaces on all the filers. The easy short-term solution is to have configured but downed second interfaces ready for quick duty, so I'll be setting that up tomorrow. What I'd like to hear from toasters is, first, which interfaces are most stable, whether single port, quad port, or Gbit, and whether anyone has had any experience with the relative reliability of fast etherchannel vs. Gbit.
I realize a single Gbit interface is theoretically less reliable than fast etherchannel because it is a single link, but what I fear about etherchannel is that a tricky etherchannel implementation combined with flaky NICs could be significantly less reliable in practice than a solid Gbit NIC. Certainly the load-balancing algorithms for etherchannel on Cisco switches are not trivial.
Network traffic is not much of an issue. The current single 100tx-fd connections are hardly taxed, with peak loads reaching only 35 Mbit. Either etherchannel or Gbit would provide enough capacity for the next year, possibly longer. The only real issue I have to address is reliability.
ejt