I've read up a little bit on bonding nics with ifenslave; what I'm having trouble understanding is whether there is special configuration needed in order to split the bonds across two switches. For example, if I have several servers that all have two nics each, and two separate switches, do I just configure the bonds and plug 1 nic from each into switch #1 and the other from each into switch #2? or is there more to it than that?

If the bonds are active-backup, will a nic failure on single machine mean that server may become disconnected since the rest of the machines are using the primary nic and it's using the secondary? Or do you link the switches with one cable as well?