NIC Teaming on Windows Server 2012

This video looks at how multiple network cards can be combined on one Windows Server. This can provide faster network throughput as well as network redundancy. The video looks at the benefits, how to configure Nic (Network Interface Controller) Teaming, and the potential pitfalls as well as limitations of Nic Teaming.

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What is NIC Teaming?
Nic (Network Interface Controller) Teaming is the process of combining multiple network cards together so the operating system sees the network cards as the one network interface. Different operating systems and hardware devices may call this process different names, for example the following may be used: bonding, balancing or aggregation; however, on Windows this is referred to as Nic Teaming. Regardless of what it is called, the result is to obtain better performance or redundancy or a combination of both.

Windows allows up to 32 network cards to be grouped together into one Nic Team. Windows is flexible in how the roles of these network cards can be configured in this Nic Team. For example, a network card could be configured as a stand by in case one of the other network cards were to fail or it could be combined with the others to improve throughput. Unfortunately Nic Teaming in Windows has some limitations and works well in some situations and not others. For this reason, in some cases you may want to configure a network card as a standby network card and other cases you may want to combine it with other network cards for greater network performance. The reasons and scenarios for these are listed below. Some of these are based on if your switch hardware supports the protocols required for Nic teaming at the hardware level.

Switch-Independent
When you create a Nic-Team in Windows Server you need to choose a Teaming mode. The simplest mode is switch-independent. This mean you are free to plug any of the network cards in that server into any network switch on your network. You can plug each network card in the same switch or each into a separate network switch or any combination in between. These switches require no configuration at all on the hardware level to support Nic Teaming and thus this is why it is considered the simplest solution to configure and start using on your network.

The first example of why you want to use a standby network rather than combine it with the other network cards is if you have an expensive high speed switch vs a low speed switch. Perhaps you have a network card that uses fiber which costs a lot more than standard Ethernet. In this case the company may not wish to purchase two fiber cards but still wants some redundancy. In cases like these, you configure the fiber network card (fast card) as the active network card. A second network card could be configured that uses standard cat 5 Ethernet as a standby network card. If the fiber card was to fail, the server would use the slower network card. This means that the server is still available even during a hardware outage.

Static Teaming (802.3ad)
This team mode requires the network switch to support the protocol 802.3ad and the protocol to be configured on the switch. Since the ports need to configured, the administrator needs to ensure that they plug the network cables into the correct port. In most cases multiple network cards can only be plugged into the same switch. If the vendor supports it, multiple switches can be combined together to form one virtual switch. By using this protocol, this means that the data coming and going to the server can be correctly load balanced. Only using network protocols can true load balancing be achieved. Without a protocol other factors will determine how efficient the load balancing of the traffic coming and going from the server will be.

LACP (802.1ax)
LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) is a newer version of the protocol 802.3ad. It works in the same way in that it allows multiple network cards to be combined together and network data to be balanced between these network cards. The main difference between this and the previous protocol is that the protocol can be configured to allow network adapters to be added to the Nic team dynamically.

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References
"Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 Exam Ref 70-410" pg 23-26
"NIC Teaming Overview" http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/li...
"Link aggregation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_ag...
"Windows Server 2012 NIC Teaming (LBFO) Deployment and Management" http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/downlo...