User Guide

Primary and Secondary Adapters
Teaming modes that do not require a switch with the same capabilities (AFT, SFT, ALB (with RLB)) use a
primary adapter. In all of these modes except RLB, the primary is the only adapter that receives traffic. RLB is
enabled by default on an ALB team.
If the primary adapter fails, another adapter will take over its duties. If you are using more than two adapters,
and you want a specific adapter to take over if the primary fails, you must specify a secondary adapter. If an
Intel AMT enabled device is part of a team, it must be designated as the primary adapter for the team.
There are two types of primary and secondary adapters:
l Default primary adapter: If you do not specify a preferred primary adapter, the software will choose
an adapter of the highest capability (model and speed) to act as the default primary. If a failover occurs,
another adapter becomes the primary. Once the problem with the original primary is resolved, the traffic
will not automatically restore to the default (original) primary adapter in most modes. The adapter will,
however, rejoin the team as a non-primary.
l Preferred Primary/Secondary adapters: You can specify a preferred adapter in Intel PROSet. Under
normal conditions, the Primary adapter handles all traffic. The Secondary adapter will receive allback
traffic if the primary fails. If the Preferred Primary adapter fails, but is later restored to an active status,
control is automatically switched back to the Preferred Primary adapter. Specifying primary and sec-
ondary adapters adds no benefit to SLA and IEEE 802.3ad dynamic teams, but doing so forces the
team to use the primary adapter's MAC address.
To specify a preferred primary or secondary adapter in Windows
1. In the Team Properties dialog box's Settings tab, click Modify Team.
2. On the Adapters tab, select an adapter.
3. Click Set Primary or Set Secondary.
4. Click OK.
The adapter's preferred setting appears in the Priority column on Intel PROSet's Team Configuration tab. A
"1" indicates a preferred primary adapter, and a "2" indicates a preferred secondary adapter.
Failover and Failback
When a link fails, either because of port or cable failure, team types that provide fault tolerance will continue to
send and receive traffic. Failover is the initial transfer of traffic from the failed link to a good link. Failback
occurs when the original adapter regains link. You can use the Activation Delay setting (located on the
Advanced tab of the team's properties in Device Manager) to specify a how long the failover adapter waits
before becoming active. If you don't want your team to failback when the original adapter gets link back, you
can set the Allow Failback setting to disabled (located on the Advanced tab of the team's properties in Device
Manager).
Adapter Fault Tolerance (AFT)
Adapter Fault Tolerance (AFT) provides automatic recovery from a link failure caused from a failure in an
adapter, cable, switch, or port by redistributing the traffic load across a backup adapter.
Failures are detected automatically, and traffic rerouting takes place as soon as the failure is detected. The
goal of AFT is to ensure that load redistribution takes place fast enough to prevent user sessions from being
disconnected. AFT supports two to eight adapters per team. Only one active team member transmits and
receives traffic. If this primary connection (cable, adapter, or port) fails, a secondary, or backup, adapter takes
over. After a failover, if the connection to the user-specified primary adapter is restored, control passes
automatically back to that primary adapter. For more information, see Primary and Secondary Adapters.