Adapter Teaming

[londint]

I want to enable NIC cards on Servers for Adapter teaming but I have heard that they do not work well with Cisco Switches. Is this correct. Where can I also get documentation on this?

Also, if it is okay to enable adapter teaming on the NIC, do I need to turn off spanning tree on the Switch port or portfast or both of them for all NIC involved.

Please help

Thanks

[brandon.applegate]

Well, without knowing the specifics of the adapter teaming scheme (and vendor, os, etc) I can't really say. However you really don't need to worry about spanning tree as these aren't switches (spanning tree speaking bridges) but rather end devices. I would guess that potential problems you are talking about are duplicate mac address issues which would be an issue for any vendor's switches. If may be possible to overcome these issues with static mac address config which floods frames out multiple ports simultaneously. If you plug your teamed NICs into a Cisco switch (running IOS) and see messages about "address flapping" this is your issue. The address flap message is the first one listed here:

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/c2900xl/29_35wc6/scg/swmsg.htm#xtocid31

[londint]

Thank you

[efrahim]

Hi

There is no known issue since the adaptive load balancing using the two different mac address. Please make sure use the set port host command on the catOS switches or make sure portfast is enabled on the switches running the IOS, other than that it works fine.

http://www.cisco.com/warp/customer/473/12.html

Here is the URL that explains the server load balancing.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/networking/teaming.html

[vincent-n]

Whatever you've heard about Cisco switch not teaming is INCORRECT. I have quite a number of devices running teaming at the moment. The NIC that I used are the Intel Pro+ and also the Intel Pro Server adapters. They work very well with the Cisco switches. Also, exactly like the other messages, keep portfast enabled on BOTH ports (the team) on the switch and you'll be find. Also note that I use "nonegotiate" teaming with the NICs. Another note is to make sure you'll hard-coded the duplex/speed settings on BOTH the switch ports and the NICs.

[londint]

Thanks for your help. Ok, I will enable both ports for portfast but what do you mean by "nonegotiate" teaming with the NIC. I am using the adapter teaming for fault tolerance not load balancing so that if one card fails, the other takes over. I am also using Intel cards and have the Intel Pro Server Adapter

Thanks