How to Master Windows Server 2012 network card Aggregation (NIC teaming)

The introduction of Windows Server 2012 is called "Cloud operating System", presumably this operating system in the virtualization domain, at the network and storage level, in the access and security level will have a strong function. Today to introduce the network card aggregation capability is to make full use of summary to improve the overall server network performance, and then achieve in high-density business load environment, high availability of network environment requirements, of course, in addition to the network card aggregation function to eliminate the CPU bottleneck is also the focus, such as offload card, Sriov, RSS,VMQ queues etc. technology in server 2012 you can find supporting core technical support. This blog today focuses on the features of network card aggregation in Windows Server 2012.

When it comes to network card aggregation, it may not be unfamiliar, and this is particularly important in the "Virtualization World", the original Windows Server 2008 R2 can not provide support, but need to rely on Hp,dell,intel, Broadcom and other companies to provide their own software to set up and support, but this is not enough, to know that the aggregation function software provided by a hardware manufacturer can only support the same brand of network card, which is not good enough for a data center that requires more choice and flexibility. Of course, you know, in Windows Server 2012, our built-in, virtualized environments rely on the ability to finally implement a preset in the operating system, so it's helpful to fully understand the rational use of this feature.

So what is network aggregation or network aggregation defined in Windows Server 2012? Network aggregation in Server 2012 there is a title called LBOF (Load Balance and failover) is also very well understood, is the load balance failover function of the network channel, familiar with this lbof gray very meaningful, This vocabulary is covered by the PowerShell cmdlet that is needed to implement and view the aggregation state of the network card; With this operating system level of functionality, you can combine different brands of the same quality network card to achieve:

1. Network bandwidth Bundle

2. Can be detected and automatically failover when a network component fails

For example, if you are not configured as "master standby" mode but "double live" mode of network card aggregation, then two 1GbE gigabit NIC can achieve 2Gb total throughput, if it is hooke′s Gigabit NIC can achieve 20Gb total throughput and so on. How many network adapters do Windows Server 2012 support to bundle? The answer is 32! It's a bandwidth that's absolutely big enough:

Server 2012 supports two network aggregation modes, and the default is to select the first mode when configuring network aggregation:

Switch Standalone mode

This pattern is most common because the switch is not required to participate in network aggregation, so the switch does not know that the NIC in the aggregation network belongs to a network card aggregation group in the host, so the NIC can connect to different switches but switch standalone mode does not require the NIC in the aggregation group to connect to different switches.

In addition, the main standby mode is used when connecting different switches, and load equalization can be achieved only when connected to the same switch.

Switch dependency mode

This mode requires the switch to participate in network aggregation, and requires all network aggregation group cards to be connected to the same physical switch or to be implemented as a single physical switch in cascaded multiple-switch mode; Depending on the mode supported by the switch, there are two modes of choice:

General static aggregation mode, IEEE 802.3ad

This mode requires that the network card connections in the pooled group be statically set on the switch. Because this approach requires static designation, there is no dynamic negotiation protocol mechanism to help the switch determine whether the cable connection is correct or if there are other errors that cause the aggregation to fail.

Dynamic aggregation mode is IEEE 802.1ax or LACP (linkaggregationcontrolprotocol link Convergence Control Protocol)

With the support of the LACP protocol, this model can dynamically identify the connection between the server and the switch, and then realize the dynamic creation of aggregation groups, add and remove group members, etc. Most switches now support the LACP-802.1AX protocol, but most require this feature to be manually enabled on the switch ports that the server is connected to.

With graphical method configuration, if the graphical interface management feature is enabled in server 2012, you can use Server Manager to create network aggregations simply.