10.2.5 Active Bonding Network

Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4-2 database servers and storage servers enable active bonding support for both ports of an InfiniBand card. Active bonding provides much higher network bandwidth when compared to active passive bonding in earlier releases because both InfiniBand ports are simultaneously used for sending network traffic.

The active bonding capability improves network bandwidth on Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4-2 because it features a new InfiniBand card that supports much higher throughput than previous InfiniBand cards. Active bonding does not improve bandwidth on earlier generation hardware because earlier InfiniBand cards were not fast enough to take advantage of the faster bandwidth provided by the latest generation server PCI bus.

Note the following about active bonding on an InfiniBand card:

• Database servers running Oracle Linux provide the active bonding capability.

• Oracle Clusterware requires the same interconnect name on each database server in the cluster. It is advisable to keep legacy bonding on the database servers when expanding existing Oracle Exadata Database Machine X3-2 and Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 systems with Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4-2 systems.

• Two IP addresses are required for each InfiniBand card for increased network bandwidth.

The following table provides guidelines on how to configure systems:

Operating System	Database Servers in Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4-2	Storage Servers in Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4-2	Database Servers in Oracle Exadata Database Machine X3-8 Full Rack with Exadata Storage Server X4-2L Servers
Oracle Linux	Active bonding	Active bonding	Legacy bonding, single port per HCA active
Oracle Solaris	IPMP, single port active	Active bonding	IPMP, single port per HCA active

Minimum hardware: Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4 generation servers

Minimum software: Oracle Exadata Storage Server Software release 11.2.3.3