Teaming Modes - Dell QLogic Family of Adapters User Manual

Windows Teaming: QLogic QME8242 Mezzanine Card User's Guide
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Windows Teaming: QLogic QME8242 Mezzanine Card User's
Guide
Overview

Teaming Modes

Using the CLI for Teaming
Using the Team Management GUI
Teaming Configuration
Viewing Teaming Statistics
Overview
You can group together multiple network adapters in a server to make a team. Individual adapters that are part of a team
operate as a team rather than standalone adapters. A team provides traffic load balancing across the member adapters and
fault tolerance when some, but not all, of the members lose connectivity.
To enable teaming functionality, install the teaming driver in addition to the basic NIC.
Team MAC Address
At initialization, the teaming driver selects the team's MAC address to be the MAC of one of the teamed adapters. In general,
the first adapter to come up is chosen to be the preferred primary adapter. The preferred primary's MAC address is assigned
to the MAC address of the team. Alternately, you can choose any valid MAC address as the team's static MAC address, also
called the Locally Administered Address (LAA). Make sure any provided LAA is unique for the local Ethernet network. This
provision gives the system administrator more flexibility in configuring the MAC address for a team when necessary.
Teaming Modes
Teaming is designed to improve reliability and fault tolerance of networks and to enhance performance by efficient load
balancing.
The following NIC teaming modes are provided:
Failsafe Mode ensures that an alternate standby or redundant adapter becomes active if the primary network
connection fails.
Switch Independent Load-Balancing Mode
Link Aggregation Modes
[LACP])) enables the use of multiple adapters together as a single, virtual adapter with the aggregated capacity of its
individual adapters.
All team types—failsafe, switch-independent load balancing, and link aggregation—can be heterogeneous as well as
homogeneous. Every team must have at least one QLogic adapter.
Table 1 shows that Failsafe and Tx load-balancing modes are switch independent, which means they do not require switch
configuration. LACP or 802.3ad requires switch ports configured for LACP.
Table 1. Windows Teaming Modes
Failover
Mode Capability
Failsafe Yes: Layer 2
Tx load balancing Yes
Static 802.3ad Yes
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ensures distribution of transmit loads across the teamed adapters.
(802.3ad static, 802.3ad dynamic (active and passive Link Aggregation Control Protocol
Switch
Dependency
No
No
Yes
SFT (System
Fault
Tolerance) Load Balancing
Yes No
Yes Yes: Layers 3 or 4 2–16
Yes Yes
Number of
Ports per
Team
(Range*)
2–16
2–16