Teaming Modes
Overview
The following teaming modes are supported, and are described later in this page:
Be sure to use the latest available drivers on all adapters.
Before creating a team, adding or removing team members, or changing advanced settings of a team member, make sure each team member has been configured similarly. Settings to check include VLANs and QoS Packet Tagging, Jumbo Frames, and the various offloads. These settings are available in the Advanced tab in Intel® PROSet. Pay particular attention when using different adapter models or adapter versions, as adapter capabilities vary.
If team members implement Advanced features differently, failover and team functionality will be affected. To avoid team implementation issues:
Create teams that use similar adapter types and models.
Reload the team after adding an adapter or changing any Advanced features. One way to reload the team is to select a new preferred primary adapter. Although there will be a temporary loss of network connectivity as the team reconfigures, the team will maintain its network addressing schema.
Hot Plug operations for an adapter that is part of a team are only available in Windows Server*.
For SLA teams, all team members must be connected to the same switch. For AFT, ALB, and RLB teams, all team members must belong to the same subnet. The members of an SFT team must be connected to a different switch.
Teaming only one adapter port is possible, but provides no benefit.
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:
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.
Preferred Primary/Secondary adapters: You can specify a preferred adapter. Under normal conditions, the Primary adapter handles all traffic. The Secondary adapter will receive 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 secondary 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.
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.
AFT is the default mode when a team is created. This mode does not provide load balancing.
AFT teaming requires that the switch not be set up for teaming and that spanning tree protocol is turned off for the switch port connected to the adapter or LOM on the server.
All members of an AFT team must be connected to the same subnet.
Switch Fault Tolerance (SFT)
Switch Fault Tolerance (SFT) supports only two adapters in a team connected to two different switches.
In SFT, one adapter is the primary adapter and one adapter is the secondary adapter. During normal operation, the secondary adapter is in standby mode. In standby, the adapter is inactive and waiting for failover to occur. It does not transmit or receive network traffic. If the primary adapter loses connectivity, the secondary adapter automatically takes over. When SFT teams are created, the Activation Delay is automatically set to 60 seconds.
In SFT mode, the two adapters creating the team can operate at different speeds.
SFT teaming requires that the switch not be set up for teaming and that spanning tree protocol is turned on.
Configuration Monitoring
You can set up monitoring between an SFT team and up to five IP addresses. This allows you to detect link failure beyond the switch. You can ensure connection availability for several clients that you consider critical. If the connection between the primary adapter and all of the monitored IP addresses is lost, the team will failover to the secondary adapter.
Adaptive/Receive Load Balancing (ALB/RLB)
Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB) is a method for dynamic distribution of data traffic load among multiple physical channels. The purpose of ALB is to improve overall bandwidth and end station performance. In ALB, multiple links are provided from the server to the switch, and the intermediate driver running on the server performs the load balancing function. The ALB architecture utilizes knowledge of Layer 3 information to achieve optimum distribution of the server transmission load.
ALB is implemented by assigning one of the physical channels as Primary and all other physical channels as Secondary. Packets leaving the server can use any one of the physical channels, but incoming packets can only use the Primary Channel. With Receive Load Balancing (RLB) enabled, it balances IP receive traffic. The intermediate driver analyzes the send and transmit loading on each adapter and balances the rate across the adapters based on destination address. Adapter teams configured for ALB and RLB also provide the benefits of fault tolerance.
ALB teaming requires that the switch not be set up for teaming and that spanning tree protocol is turned off for the switch port connected to the network adapter in the server.
ALB does not balance traffic when protocols such as NetBEUI and IPX* are used. You may create an ALB team with mixed speed adapters. The load is balanced according to the adapter’s capabilities and bandwidth of the channel.
All members of ALB and RLB teams must be connected to the same subnet.
Virtual NICs cannot be created on a team with Receive Load Balancing enabled. Receive Load Balancing is automatically disabled if you create a virtual NIC on a team.
Virtual Machine Load Balancing (VMLB)
Virtual Machine Load Balancing (VMLB) provides transmit and receive traffic load balancing across Virtual Machines bound to the team interface, as well as fault tolerance in the event of switch port, cable, or adapter failure.
The driver analyzes the transmit and receive load on each member adapter and balances the traffic across member adapters. In a VMLB team, each Virtual Machine is associated with one team member for its TX and RX traffic.
If only one virtual NIC is bound to the team, or if Hyper-V is removed, then the VMLB team will act like an AFT team.
VMLB does not load balance non-routed protocols such as NetBEUI and some IPX* traffic.
VMLB supports from two to eight adapter ports per team.
You can create a VMLB team with mixed speed adapters. The load is balanced according to the lowest common denominator of adapter capabilities and the bandwidth of the channel.
You cannot use an Intel AMT enabled adapter in a VMLB team.
Static Link Aggregation (SLA)
Static Link Aggregation (SLA) is very similar to Adaptive/Receive Load Balancing (ALB/RLB), taking several physical channels and combining them into a single logical channel.
This mode works with:
Cisco EtherChannel* capable switches with channeling mode set to “on”
Intel switches capable of Link Aggregation
Other switches capable of static 802.3ad
All adapters in a Static Link Aggregation team must run at the same speed and must be connected to a Static Link Aggregation-capable switch. If the speed capabilities of adapters in a Static Link Aggregation team are different, the speed of the team is dependent on the switch.
Static Link Aggregation teaming requires that the switch be set up for Static Link Aggregation teaming and that spanning tree protocol is turned off.
An Intel AMT enabled adapter cannot be used in an SLA team.
IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation
IEEE 802.3ad is the IEEE standard. Teams can contain two to eight adapters. You must use 802.3ad switches (in dynamic mode, aggregation can go across switches). Adapter teams configured for IEEE 802.3ad also provide the benefits of fault tolerance and load balancing. Under 802.3ad, all protocols can be load balanced.
Dynamic mode supports multiple aggregators. Aggregators are formed by port speed connected to a switch. For example, a team can contain adapters running at 1Gbps and 10Gbps, but two aggregators will be formed, one for each speed. Also, if a team contains 1Gbps ports connected to one switch, and a combination of 1Gbps and 10Gbps ports connected to a second switch, three aggregators would be formed. One containing all the ports connected to the first switch, one containing the 1Gbps ports connected to the second switch, and the third containing the 10Gbps ports connected to the second switch.
IEEE 802.3ad teaming requires that the switch be set up for IEEE 802.3ad (link aggregation) teaming and that spanning tree protocol is turned off.
Once you choose an aggregator, it remains in force until all adapters in that aggregation team lose link.
In some switches, copper and fiber adapters cannot belong to the same aggregator in an IEEE 802.3ad configuration. If there are copper and fiber adapters installed in a system, the switch might configure the copper adapters in one aggregator and the fiber-based adapters in another. If you experience this behavior, for best performance you should use either only copper-based or only fiber-based adapters in a system.
An Intel AMT enabled adapter cannot be used in a DLA team.
Before you begin:
Verify that the switch fully supports the IEEE 802.3ad standard.
Check your switch documentation for port dependencies. Some switches require pairing to start on a primary port.
Check your speed and duplex settings to ensure the adapter and switch are running at full duplex, either forced or set to auto-negotiate. Both the adapter and the switch must have the same speed and duplex configuration. The full-duplex requirement is part of the IEEE 802.3ad specification: http://standards.ieee.org/. If needed, change your speed or duplex setting before you link the adapter to the switch. Although you can change speed and duplex settings after the team is created, Intel recommends you disconnect the cables until settings are in effect. In some cases, switches or servers might not appropriately recognize modified speed or duplex settings if settings are changed when there is an active link to the network.
If you are configuring a VLAN, check your switch documentation for VLAN compatibility notes. Not all switches support simultaneous dynamic 802.3ad teams and VLANs. If you do choose to set up VLANs, configure teaming and VLAN settings on the adapter before you link the adapter to the switch. Setting up VLANs after the switch has created an active aggregator affects VLAN functionality.
Multi-Vendor Teaming (MVT)
Multi-Vendor Teaming (MVT) allows teaming with a combination of Intel and non-Intel adapters.
If you are using a Windows-based computer, adapters that appear in the Intel PROSet teaming wizard can be included in a team.
MVT Design Considerations:
In order to activate MVT, you must have at least one Intel adapter or integrated connection in the team, which must be designated as the primary adapter.
A multi-vendor team can be created for any team type.
All members in an MVT must operate on a common feature set (lowest common denominator).
Manually verify that the frame setting for the non-Intel adapter is the
same as the frame settings for the Intel adapters.
If a non-Intel adapter is added to a team, its RSS settings must match the Intel adapters in the team.