How to configure your NIC for OVHcloud Link Aggregation in Debian 9 to 11

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How to configure your NIC for OVHcloud Link Aggregation in Debian 9 to 11


Icons/System/eye-open Created with Sketch. 2450 Ansichten 09.01.2026 Cloud / Dedicated Server (Bare Metal)

Objective

OVHcloud Link Aggregation (OLA) technology is designed by our teams to increase your server’s availability, and boost the efficiency of your network connections. In just a few clicks, you can aggregate your network cards and make your network links redundant. This means that if one link goes down, traffic is automatically redirected to another available link.

This guide explains how to bond your NICs to use them for OLA in Debian (versions 9 to 11)

Requirements

You will need to download the ifenslave package on the server before enabling OLA in the OVHcloud Control Panel or API. To do so, please use the following command:

apt install ifenslave

This guide provides instructions for configuring network interface bonding specifically using ifupdown, whose configuration file is located at /etc/network/interfaces. It also applies to the rescue system.

If your system's network configuration uses Netplan instead, please refer to this guide.

Instructions

Because you have a private-private configuration for your NICs in OLA, you will be unable to SSH into the server. Thus, you will need to leverage the IPMI tool to access the server.
To do so, first log in to your OVHcloud Control Panel. In the Bare Metal Cloud section, select your server from Dedicated Servers and click the IPMI tab (1).

Next, click the From a Java applet (KVM) button (2).

remote kvm

A JNLP program will download. Open the program to enter the IPMI. Log in using valid credentials for the server.

By default, using an OVHcloud template, the NICs will be named either ethX or enoX. If you are not using an OVHcloud template, you can find the names of your interfaces using the following command:

ip a

This command will yield numerous "interfaces." If you are having trouble determining which ones are your physical NICs, the first interface will still have the server's public IP address attached to it by default.

Once we have determined the names of our two NICs, we will configure NIC bonding in the OS. Create the interfaces file in a text editor of your choice using the following command:

vi /etc/network/interfaces

This will open an empty text file. To configure the bond interface, insert the following at the bottom of the text file:

auto bond0
iface bond0 inet static
  address 10.0.0.1/24
  hwaddress ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
  bond-mode 802.3ad
  bond-slaves eno1 eno2
  bond-lacp-rate fast
  bond-xmit_hash_policy layer3+4

  up ip -6 addr add fc10:0000:0000:0001::/64 dev bond0

For the hwaddress parameter, we recommend using the smaller of the two MAC addresses of your NICs, as it belongs to the LACP fallback interface.

You only need to add the last line to this file if you are planning on configuring private networking via IPv6.

Finally, we will restart the networking daemon using the following command:

systemctl restart networking

This restart may take several seconds since it is building the bond interface. To test that our bond is working, ping another server on the same vRack. If it works, you are all set. If it does not, double check your configurations or try rebooting the server.

Go further

Configuring OVHcloud Link Aggregation in the OVHcloud Control Panel.

How to Configure Your NIC for OVHcloud Link Aggregation in Windows Server 2019.

How to Configure Your NIC for OVHcloud Link Aggregation in SLES 15.

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