Users Guide

2–Configuring Teaming in Windows Server
Load Balancing and Fault Tolerance
Doc No. BC0054508-00 Rev. R
January 21, 2021 Page 9 Copyright © 2021 Marvell
Types of Teams
The available types of teams for the Windows family of operating systems are:
 Smart Load Balancing and Failover
 Link Aggregation (802.3ad)
 Generic Trunking (FEC/GEC)/802.3ad-Draft Static
 SLB (Auto-Fallback Disable)
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.
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.