Guidelines for configuring interface groups

Before creating and configuring interface groups, you must follow certain guidelines about the type, MTU size, speed, and media of the underlying interfaces.

The following guidelines apply when you create and configure interface groups on your storage system:

•	It is best that the network interfaces that are part of an interface group are on the same network adapter.

•	You can configure a maximum of 8 network interfaces in a single interface group.

•	You cannot include a VLAN interface in an interface group.

•	The interfaces that form an interface group must have the same Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size.

If you attempt to create or add to an interface group and the member interfaces have different MTU sizes, Data ONTAP automatically modifies the MTU size to be the same. To ensure that the desired MTU size is configured, you can use the ifconfig command to configure the MTU size of the interface group after it is created. You need to configure the MTU size only if you are enabling jumbo frames on the interfaces.

•	When an interface on a TOE NIC is in an interface group, the TOE functionality is disabled on all TOE NICs.

•	You can include any interface, except the e0M management interface that is present on some storage systems.

•	Do not mix interfaces of different speeds or media in the same multimode interface group.

•	You should set the same flow control settings for all the underlying physical network interfaces that constitute an interface group.

It is best to set the flow control settings of all the network interfaces to full, the default control type.

Some switches might not support multimode link aggregation of ports configured for jumbo frames. For more information, see your switch vendor's documentation.

Related concepts

Interface links for a virtual interface