The short summary is that the Solaris 8 IP Network Multipathing feature is intended with SunTrunk compatable switches.  So, it won't work in a peer to peer environment with a NetApp.

I didn't bother with trying to hook up a switch as this is temporary.  Ended up just ifconfig-ing 4 different interfaces on both the filer and Sun.

-----Original Message-----
From: Surlow, Jim
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 3:53 PM
To: 'toasters@mathworks.com'
Subject: Solaris IP Network Multipathing -- help needed -- peer to peer
w/F840 using Quad 100BaseT

Toaster Admins,

Am wondering if anyone has done what I'm currently trying to do.

I'm trying to setup a Sun E6500 w/a Quad Fast Ethernet Card to connect
directly to an F840 w/a Quad NIC using IP Network Multipathing found in
Sol 8.  I'm running OnTap 6.1.2.  These are connected together without
a switch or hub.

Each of the boxes has a separate NIC to connect to our LAN.

I currently have a vif established on the filer and I have the Solaris
box cooperating (no errors in the logs anymore).  I can mount over the
vif (and use the group IP on the "Solaris vif").

The problem is that I only seeing substantial traffic over a single ethernet
interface (using "vif stat <vif name>").  And when I say "substantial", it
seems that there are ping packets or such on occasion checking the up state
of the connections.

According to http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0801/Multipathing-updt1.pdf (page 4),
it says that outbound packets should be balanced over the multipath which
in my tests they clearly are not.

Has anyone else come across this? 

My test case has 9 mount points.  If this fails, I'm thinking of dividing up
the mounts over the 4 ports in the QFE and mounting the exports separately,
but then I get no pooling of the interfaces and no failover.  Pros & Cons to
this?

Thanks,

J. Surlow