Today, we're going to use two QNAP TS- 431P NAS units to demonstrate the creation
of two dynamic link aggregation groups, or LAGs, on a TP-LINK 24-port gigabit
managed switch. The model number of the switch that we'll use is the TL-SG2424 v2.
Dynamic link aggregation using the 802.3ad standard, also known as port
trunking, allows you to group multiple Ethernet interfaces together to create
one logical link. This increases bandwidth when multiple
users are transferring files across the linked LAN ports, and provides
redundancy when one of the ports fails. The two QNAP TS-431P network attached
storage units have two LAN ports each. The first QNAP is named Psi, and the
second one is named Phi. I'll use both ports on each device and set up two LAGs
on the switch. So on the QNAP named Psi, I'll plug in an
Ethernet cable into each port, and then on the managed switch, I'll use ports 15
and 16.
The QNAP named Phi is going to use both ports as well,
and those will plug into ports 17 and 18.
Let's log into the TP-LINK switch first. The first
screen shows that I've got ports 15 and 16 connected to the first QNAP, and 17
and 18 connected to the second one. Now on my network, I have a whole slew of
other devices connected to the switch, which I didn't show in the previous clip,
but we can ignore those for now. The only ports that we're concerned about are 15
and 16, which we'll group together as one trunk, and 17 and 18 for the second trunk.
Click on Switching, and then LAG, and head to the LACP Config tab. Scroll down to
the first two ports (15 and 16), select them,
and set the Mode to Active, Status to Enable, and the Admin Key to one, and then Apply.
For the second link aggregation group, select ports 17 and 18,
but this time set the Admin Key to two, setting Mode to Active, and Status to Enable,
and then hit Apply.
Now we need to configure the NAS devices to set up the trunks on the QNAP
side. Let's log into the QNAP TS-431P named Psi, go to Control Panel, click
Network, and you'll see we have the two LAN ports active. I've assigned the first
port a static IP address, while the second one is just getting its address
from the DHCP server. In the end, after we bond these together, the group will take
the IP of the static address. You'll want to click the Port Trunking button, choose
IEEE 802.3ad, and select both LAN ports. If you want to change the default
hash policy, you can click on the little pencil icon next to the IEEE 802.3ad,
but I'll just leave it on the default for now and hit Apply. At this
point, the QNAP has to reconnect using the LAG, so you will need to wait about
40 seconds to re-establish contact. I'll cut the video here to speed things up
and you won't even notice it. Once the refresh link appears, we'll see
that the trunk is established.
Now we'll do the same thing to the QNAP named Phi.
Again, we'll go to the Control Panel, and Network, and we'll combine the two ports by going to
Port Trunking. Set it to IEEE 802.3ad, select the two ports again,
and hit Apply.
After reconnecting,
we see the trunk has been created successfully. As we go back to the
TP-LINK, you'll see things haven't refreshed yet on the LACP screen, so
let's click on LAG to refresh the information. Tabbing to LACP Config,
you'll see that the LAG groups have been created. Hitting the LAG Table, you'll see
ports 15 and 16 are part of LAG 1, and 17 and 18 are part of LAG 2.
I hope you enjoyed - Thanks for watching!