Load Balancing And Fault Tolerance - Dell Broadcom NetXtreme Family of Adapters User Manual

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Teaming: Broadcom NetXtreme 57XX User Guide
Overview

Load Balancing and Fault Tolerance

NOTE: See Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet Teaming Services
Glossary of Terms and Acronyms
Teaming Concepts
Software Components
Hardware Requirements
Supported Teaming by Processor
Configuring Teaming by Operating System
Supported Features by Team Type
Selecting a Team Type
Teaming Mechanisms
Architecture
Types of Teams
Driver Support by Operating System
Supported Teaming Speeds
Teaming and Other Advanced Networking Features
General Network Considerations
Application Considerations
Troubleshooting Teaming Problems
Frequently-Asked Questions
Event Log Messages
Overview
Adapter teaming allows you to group network adapters together to function as a team. The benefits of teaming include
allowing membership to VLANs, providing load balancing between adapters, and offering fault tolerance. These benefits can
be combined such that you can couple the functionality of load balancing for the load balance members and the capability of
employing a failover with having the team participate on different VLANs.
Broadcom Advanced Server Program (BASP) is the Broadcom teaming software for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server
2008, and NetWare operating systems. For Windows operating systems, BASP is configured through the
Control Suite 3 (BACS 3)
frames for the team (see
Teaming with Channel Bonding).
BASP supports four types of load balancing teams:
Smart Load Balancing and Failover
Link Aggregation (802.3ad)
Generic Trunking (FEC/GEC)/802.3ad-Draft Static
SLB (Auto-Fallback Disable)
NOTE: Enabling Windows Server 2003 built-in bridging is not advisable when you are using teaming software.
Load Balancing and Fault Tolerance
utility. For NetWare operating systems, teams are configured by loading BASP with all the necessary
Configuring Teaming). For Linux operating systems, teaming is done with channel bonding (see
for detailed information on the following topics:
Broadcom Advanced