The MultiNICB agent works with the IPMultiNICB agent. It allows IP addresses to fail over to multiple interfaces on the same system before VCS tries to fail over to another system. You can use the agent to make IP addresses on multiple-adapter systems highly available or to monitor them.

When you use the MultiNICB agent, you must configure the interfaces before putting them under the agent's control. You must configure all the interfaces in a single MultiNICB resource with the base IP addresses that are in the same subnet.

If multiple service groups have IPMultiNICB resources associated with the same MultiNICB resource, only one group should have the MultiNICB resource. The other groups can have a proxy resource pointing to it.

For the MultiNICB and IPMultiNICB agents, VCS supports Oracle trunking.

For the MultiNICB and IPMultiNICB agents, VCS supports either IPv4 or IPv6.

The value of the MonitorInterval attribute for the MultiNICB type must be less than its value for the IPMultiNICB type. The IPMultiNICB agent relies on the MultiNICB agent to accurately report the state of the NICs. If the value of the MonitorInterval of the IPMultiNICB agent is less than the interval for the MultiNICB agent, then in some monitor cycles the potential exists for the MultiNICB agent to provide the IPMultiNICB agent stale information.

The default value for the MonitorInterval attribute for IPMultiNICB is 30 seconds, and the minimum and default value for MultiNICB is 10 seconds.