User Manual

Rev 4.70

Mellanox Technologies

The figure below is an example of the displayed Port Protocol window for a dual port VPI

adapter card.

Step 3. In this step, you can perform the following functions:

• If you choose the HW Defaults option, the port protocols will be determined according to the NIC’s

hardware default values.

• Choose the desired port protocol for the available port(s). If you choose IB or ETH, both ends of the

connection must be of the same type (IB or ETH).

• Enable Auto Sensing by checking the AUTO checkbox. If the NIC does not support Auto Sensing,

the AUTO option will be grayed out.

8.5 Load Balancing, Fail-Over (LBFO) and VLAN

Windows Server 2012 and above supports load balancing as part of the operating system. Please

refer to Microsoft guide “NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012” following the link below:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/14951.nic-teaming-in-windows-server-

2012.aspx

For other earlier operating systems, please refer to the sections below.

8.5.1 Adapter Teaming

Adapter teaming can group a group of ports inside a network adapter or a number of physical net-

work adapters into virtual adapters that provide the fault-tolerance and load-balancing functions.

Depending on the teaming mode, one or more interfaces can be active. The non-active interfaces

in a team are in a standby mode and will take over the network traffic in the event of a link failure

in the active interfaces. All of the active interfaces in a team participate in load-balancing opera-

tions by sending and receiving a portion of the total network traffic.

If you choose AUTO, the current setting will indicate the actual port settings: IB or

ETH.