How to safely remove EtherChannel/PortChannel member?

[jwbensley]

If I have the followig configured;

int po1

switchport mode trunk

int fa0/1

switchport mode trunk

channel-group 1 mode on

int fa0/2

switchport mode trunk

channel-group 1 mode on

Short Question:

How can I remove fa0/2 from the PortChannel without disrupting the data flow?

Long Question:

If data is being send over both links, presumably just entering "shutdown" on a member interface will instantly shutdown the interface, and drop any exsiting traffic flow(s). A file transfer for example might be lost, the end user would probably get a "destination unavailable" type message and have to start again.

Is there a method to "gracefully" remove a member interface? Perhaps where no new flows would be transmitted over the interface, and once all existing ones have stopped, it would be removed?

Cheers.

[Reza Sharifi]

Yes, you lose basically what is already in the wire. There is command (I can't remember it right now) that will show you which interface is being utilized. You can use this command to monitor the interface and if you see only one interface being used (in this case fa0/1) then you can shut fa0/2. It is still risky, so I would still do this in an outage window as you never know what can go wrong.

HTH