Users Guide
2–Configuring Teaming in Windows Server
Load Balancing and Fault Tolerance
10 BC0054508-00 M
Smart Load Balancing and Failover
Smart Load Balancing and Failover is the Broadcom
®
implementation of
switch-independent NIC teaming load balancing based on IP flow. This feature
supports balancing IP traffic across multiple adapters (team members) in a
bidirectional manner. In this type of team, all adapters in the team have separate
MAC addresses. This team type provides automatic fault detection and dynamic
failover to another team member or to a hot standby member. Failover is
performed independently of Layer 3 protocol (IP, IPX, and NetBIOS Extended
User Interface [NetBEUI]); rather, it works with existing Layer 2 and 3 switches.
No switch configuration (such as trunk, link aggregation) is necessary for this type
of team to work.
Link Aggregation (802.3ad)
The Link Aggregation mode supports link aggregation and conforms to the IEEE
802.3ad (LACP) specification. Configuration software allows you to dynamically
configure the adapters that you want to participate in a specific team. If the link
partner is not correctly configured for 802.3ad link configuration, errors are
detected and noted. With this mode, all adapters in the team are configured to
receive packets for the same MAC address. The outbound load-balancing
scheme is determined by Marvell’s QLASP driver. The team link partner
determines the load-balancing scheme for inbound packets. In this mode, at least
one of the link partners must be in active mode.
NOTE
If you do not enable LiveLink when configuring SLB teams, Marvell
recommends that you either disable Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) or
enable Port Fast at the switch or port. This practice minimizes the
downtime due to spanning tree loop determination when failing over.
LiveLink mitigates such issues.
TCP/IP is fully balanced and Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX)
balances only on the transmit side of the team; other protocols are
limited to the primary adapter.
If a team member is linked at a higher speed than another, most of the
traffic is handled by the adapter with the higher speed rate.
NOTE
The static and dynamic Link Aggregation (switch dependent) team type is
not supported on ports with NIC partitioning (NPAR) mode enabled or
iSCSI-offload enabled. Some switches support FCoE-offload in dynamic
LACP teaming mode. Consult your switch documentation for more
information.