Users Guide

11–QLogic Teaming Services
General Network Considerations
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Teaming with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
The only supported QLASP team configuration when using Microsoft Virtual
Server 2005 is with a Smart Load Balancing team-type consisting of a single
primary QLogic adapter and a standby QLogic adapter. Make sure to unbind or
deselect “Virtual Machine Network Services” from each team member prior to
creating a team and prior to creating virtual networks with Microsoft Virtual Server.
Additionally, create a virtual network in this software and subsequently bound to
the virtual adapter created by a team. Directly binding a guest operating system to
a team virtual adapter may not render the results that you want.
Teaming Across Switches
SLB teaming can be configured across switches. The switches, however, must be
connected together. Generic Trunking and Link Aggregation do not work across
switches because each of these implementations requires that all physical
adapters in a team share the same Ethernet MAC address. It is important to note
that SLB can only detect the loss of link between the ports in the team and their
immediate link partner. SLB has no way of reacting to other hardware failures in
the switches and cannot detect loss of link on other ports.
Switch-Link Fault Tolerance
The figures in this section describe the operation of an SLB team in a switch fault
tolerant configuration. QLogic shows the mapping of the ping request and ping
replies in an SLB team with two active members. All servers (Blue, Gray, and
Red) have a continuous ping to each other. These scenarios describe the
behavior of teaming across the two switches and the importance of the
interconnect link.
 Figure 11-3 is a setup without the interconnect cable in place between the
two switches.
 Figure 11-4 has the interconnect cable in place.
 Figure 11-5 is an example of a failover event with the Interconnect cable in
place.
NOTE
As of this writing, Windows Server 2008 is not a supported operating system
for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005; thus, teaming may not function as
expected with this combination.