Enabling Ethernet Adapter Teaming; Intel Adapters - IBM totalstorage 326 User Reference

Enabling Ethernet adapter teaming

This section describes how to enable adapter teaming on the Ethernet adapters.

Intel adapters

The Intel Ethernet adapters (Gigabit Ethernet SX and 10/100 Ethernet) that you
install in the PCI slots of the Model 326 nodes support adapter teaming. The 10/100
adapter can also team with the integrated onboard 10/100 Intel Ethernet controller
on the engine. With adapter teaming, two or more PCI Ethernet adapters can be
physically connected to the same IP subnetwork and then logically combined into
an adapter team. Such a team can support one of the following functional modes:
Adapter Fault Tolerance (AFT)
Adapter Load Balancing (ALB)
Fast Etherchannel (FEC)
802.3ad
Note: It is strongly recommended that you configure adapter teaming before you
Only one adapter in the team is fully active on the Ethernet network (for
example, sending and receiving data) at any point in time, while the other
adapters are in standby mode (receiving data only). If that adapter detects
a link failure or fails completely, another adapter in the team automatically
and rapidly takes over as the active adapter, and all Ethernet traffic being
handled by the failing adapter is seamlessly switched to the new active
adapter, with no interruption to network sessions (for example, file transfers)
in progress at the time of the failover.
All adapters in the team are active, increasing the total transmission
throughput over the common IP subnetwork. If any adapter in the team fails
(link failure or complete failure), the other adapters in the team continue to
share the network transmission load, although total throughput is
decreased. Load balancing is only supported for adapter teams consisting
of only one type of adapter; different types of adapters cannot be combined
in a load-balancing team.
FEC is a proprietary technology developed by Cisco. With FEC, you can
create a team of two to four ports on an adapter to increase transmission
and reception throughput. The FEC might also be referred to as load
balancing, port aggregation, or trunking. When you configure this feature,
the adapter ports comprising the FEC team or group create a single
high-speed, fault-tolerant link between the engine and the Ethernet switch
sharing one IP address. With FEC, fault tolerance and load balancing is
provided for both outbound and inbound traffic, unlike other load-balancing
schemes that only balance outbound traffic.
Note: FEC requires an Ethernet switch with FEC capability. The FEC
implementation on the 4-port 10/100 Ethernet adapter does not
support the optional Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) feature of
FEC-capable Ethernet switches.
802.3ad is an IEEE industry-standard similar to Cisco's FEC/Gigabit
Etherchannel (GEC). 802.3ad requires an Ethernet switch with 802.3ad
capability.
set up Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) clustering, as described in
"Chapter 5. Completing networking, clustering, and storage access setup" on
page 37
Chapter 7. Managing adapters and controllers
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