ElasticXL and magg

[Alex-]

We have staged a new ElasticXL and by default the system will create a magg interface with the management interface in it.

Our customer wants to use a VLAN bonded fibre ports on which other VLAN will be hosted as well for high-speed connectivity, leaving the UTP Mgmt port unused.

We changed the management definition to the VLAN interface in serial console and updated the topology in Smart Console.

No issues whatsoever but now the magg is having a dummy IP, unused.

Two questions:

- Can we simply delete it or is it better to leave the magg interface present, or can't it be deleted

- Are there any gotchas to not using the magg as everything seems to work normally, however we don't want to have to make changes again once in production

[Wolfgang]

@Alex- some configurations are technical working but not supported. From the documentation R82 Gaia Administration Guide : MAGG Interface 

„MAGG interface does not support VLAN interfaces on its management bonding group“

[Alex-]

We don't want to use the magg at all, just bondx.y as management interface and object IP in Smart Console.

It works but the question is if it should and will continue to work or is the magg structurally important.

[emmap · Accepted solution]

The magg interface has to be configured and enabled, best bet is to put a dummy IP on it that won't conflict with anything internal (I used a 169.254 IP when I had a similar implementation) and connect it to a switch port to nowhere. That's what I did and so far I haven't had any issues with managing the cluster via the VLAN sub interface on a separate bond.

[Alex-]

Thanks, that would be worthy addition to the documentation.

[reybanger]

What is the purpose exactly of this interface in ElasticXL cluster that requires us to do this kind of pirouettes? 🙂 I guess nothing important since it's dummy interface? 

[emmap]

Ideally the purpose of it is to use it for administrative access to the cluster, but if your architecture doesn't work for it then it just kind of ends up hanging there doing not much.