LACP configuration now available at OS installation on Scale and High Grade servers

Bare Metal and VPS
1

Hello,

We have added a new option to configure LACP bonds when installing an operating system on Scale and High Grade Bare Metal servers.

Context

Scale and High Grade servers have 4 network interfaces. In their default configuration, these are aggregated on the OVHcloud side into two pairs: one public and one private (vRack).

In the past, no bond was configured when OVHcloud installed an operating system, and connectivity relied on the LACP fallback interface — the single port of the public aggregation that stays up when the server is not negotiating LACP. To benefit from the redundancy and additional bandwidth of the aggregation, the LACP configuration had to be applied manually on the operating system side.

What the option does

When the option is enabled, the installation configures a bond for each pair:

  • the 2 public interfaces are bonded together, and the bond carries the server's public IP address
  • the 2 private interfaces are bonded together as well, and that bond is created without any IP configuration: the addressing has to be configured separately

How to enable it

  • in the OVHcloud Control Panel, check the Enable LACP to aggregate multiple network interfaces (if applicable) box in the installation wizard

  • through the API, set the enableLacpBonding boolean in the installation customizations:

    "customizations": {
  "enableLacpBonding": true
}

:information_source: The option is offered for all servers, but it only has an effect if the server actually has interfaces to bond.

Where the option is available, it is disabled by default for now, to stay compatible with configurations that expect a single public interface.

:warning: The option may be enabled by default in the future, in which case I will update this topic.

Supported operating systems

The option is available for the following families:

  • AlmaLinux 8 and 9 — AlmaLinux 10 is affected by a cloud-init bug
  • Debian — except Debian 11, which is skipped as it is close to end of life
  • Proxmox Virtual Environment and Proxmox Backup Server
  • Rocky Linux 9 — 8 and 10 are affected by cloud-init bugs
  • Ubuntu Server — optional on 22.04 and 24.04, always enabled from 26.04 onwards
  • Windows Server — except the Hyper-V images, because an LBFO team bound to a Hyper-V virtual switch is not supported

It is also available for Bring Your Own Image and Bring Your Own Linux installations.

The cPanel and Plesk images do not support the option yet.

:information_source: Starting with Ubuntu Server 26.04, the LACP bonds are always configured on operating systems newly added to the catalog, and the option is not offered for them.

2

We've removed the option on AlmaLinux 10, Rocky Linux 10 and Fedora because of a cloud-init bug where the bond's MAC is not set when the NetworkManager renderer is used, preventing the server from getting an IP via DHCP.

I am preparing an upstream fix for the cloud-init bug and I will update the topic if it gets ported to the aforementioned distributions.

AlmaLinux 8 and 9, Rocky Linux 9 are unaffected and keep the option; they rely on the ifcfg renderer.