nic teaming

carl_townshend · ‎01-24-2008

Hi all, we currently have nics teamed on our hp servers, 1 nic goes to switch A , the other goes to switch B, my question is, is this load balancing the connection, or is only one link in use, as the same mac address cannot exist on 2 different ports.

what will it be doing in this situation ?

Danilo Dy · ‎01-24-2008

Hi,

That depends on the server provider (HP) and the OS running on the server.

For example, in HP Proliant Servers, the Network Configuration Utility provides a user-friendly method to configure load balancing and to view the resulting distribution of network traffic. HP makes this technology available to all HP ProLiant customers running Microsoft Windows operating systems.

On top of that, it provides high availability of server connection to your network if you have a high availability network for which each NIC of the server is connected to a different switch. Maintenance or failure of one of the switch does not affect the availability of the server and services that it host.

Regards,

Dandy

carl_townshend · ‎01-25-2008

how does this work, does it use 1 mac address between each card ? I cant see how this can load balance, as if 1 mac addresses exsisted on 2 different switches, this would cause issues.

does anyone know it works ?

carl_townshend · ‎01-30-2008

can anyone please help on this? thanks

Carl

srue · ‎01-30-2008

It's my understanding that HP NIC teaming can operate in one of two modes - active/standby, or active/active. It was also my understanding that in active/active mode, both NICs had to be plugged into the same switch. Thats my two cents. Look on the server to see how the NICs are teamed.