NIC Teaming, also known in Microsoft as Load Balancing / Failover (LBFO), lets you install additional physical Ethernet (NIC) adapters in your server and Team or merge them together to deliver a single virtual NIC that offers better performance and fault tolerance. Oops, I just gave two reasons to use NIC Teaming! You'll need at least one adapter, which can be used to separate traffic, which uses VLANs. To take advantage of the LBFO benefits of NIC Teaming, you'll need at least two switches, and Windows Server 2012 will support up to 32 switches in one team. Wireless and Bluetooth adapters are not supported, but they will not provide the transfer speeds you want to see from your servers anyway.
1) Built-in support in Windows Server 2012
If you want to use NIC Teaming with earlier versions of Windows Server, you will have to purchase specific network adapters from a manufacturer such as Intel, and then download and install the add-on software to create and manage the team.
With Windows Server 2012, the software component for creating and managing the NIC team is included in the operating system and is available in all versions, both Server Core, Full Server and Hyper-V versions.
With Windows Server 2012, you can use NICs from any manufacturer, as long as the NIC is supported by the operating system or you can find a driver that works with Windows Server 2012. A team of all NICs can consist of one manufacturer, or you can mix companies Manufactured within the same team. New NICs can be added or replaced without fear of whether they will work with the current software or not. Microsoft does not support running NICs that are evaluated at different speeds, but they will work most of the time. Therefore, you will need to make sure that the NICs you plan to use all support the same transfer speeds if possible.
My own recommendation is to stay with the same manufacturer as possible to maintain a common set of drivers. I always hated the need to search around the Internet for different drivers. However, I have a team working in my lab with a set of Realtek and Intel cards and have no problems.
With Switch Independent, team configuration will work with any network switch. This means that you can use non-smart switches in your network and still use NIC Teaming because all information about how outbound traffic is distributed is managed by Windows Server 2012. The downside is that all incoming traffic is sent to only one network interface card which is not Distributed among all active NICs. This works great for web servers or FTB servers with heavy external traffic.
With Switch Dependent, team configuration involves involving network switches in the NIC Teaming configuration. Yes, you will need to configure both the key and the host to determine which links make up the team. Windows Server 2012 supports Teamic / Static Teaming, where you statically configure links, or dynamic Teaming Teaming using a protocol such as Link Aggregation Control (LACP), which dynamically determines the links that are connected between the host and the switch. Both modes allow both inbound and outbound traffic to approach the practical bandwidth of team members because the team is seen as a single route. This works great on any server that has heavy inbound and outbound traffic.
4) NIC Teaming provides fault tolerance
Just by adding a second NIC and creating a team, you have built-in fault tolerance. One bad card or cable does not take the rest of the team members down below. As an added bonus, if you use Switch Independent, you can connect your team members to different switches, so if the switch comes out, you still have team members providing network connectivity. You can even set the Network Interface Card (NIC) as a Standby Adapter so that the device fails (NIC), or when the cable is cut off or becomes a port on the switch in case of disconnection, the standby adapter becomes active and bears the workload.
5) GUI or PowerShell?
With the Teaming NIC included in Windows Server 2012, you'll get both. Therefore, if you want the GUI to point and click Configure or prefer the "old way" to type commands, Microsoft has covered them. If your preferences are the GUI, you can enable NIC Teaming from Server Manager and go to the properties screen for the server you want to enable and configure NIC Teaming. For PowerShell users, you can run the Get-Command-Module NetLBFO cmdlets to see a list of 13 cmdlets that can be used to manage NIC Teaming.
Select New Team from the TASKS dropdown menu:
Select the adapters you want to include in the Team and click OK. The team will be created (Note: A new adapter will be created named Team NIC, you may not be able to access the device through RDP depending on your network configuration):
Now team is ready
It’s time to configure the team, open the Network and Sharing Center and click the team name:
Configure the team and enjoy it:
So let's take a look at the top five reasons to use the NIC team
1) Built-in support in Windows Server 2012
If you want to use NIC Teaming with earlier versions of Windows Server, you will have to purchase specific network adapters from a manufacturer such as Intel, and then download and install the add-on software to create and manage the team.
With Windows Server 2012, the software component for creating and managing the NIC team is included in the operating system and is available in all versions, both Server Core, Full Server and Hyper-V versions.
2) Works with any NIC that supports Windows Server 2012
You mentioned that earlier versions of Windows Server required software from the NIC card manufacturer. This means that you can't mix NICs in a team of different manufacturers. This can make it difficult if you need to add or replace the NIC because the asset is not available or difficult to find, and if you end up with a newer NIC, you should worry about compatibility with NIC Teaming.With Windows Server 2012, you can use NICs from any manufacturer, as long as the NIC is supported by the operating system or you can find a driver that works with Windows Server 2012. A team of all NICs can consist of one manufacturer, or you can mix companies Manufactured within the same team. New NICs can be added or replaced without fear of whether they will work with the current software or not. Microsoft does not support running NICs that are evaluated at different speeds, but they will work most of the time. Therefore, you will need to make sure that the NICs you plan to use all support the same transfer speeds if possible.
My own recommendation is to stay with the same manufacturer as possible to maintain a common set of drivers. I always hated the need to search around the Internet for different drivers. However, I have a team working in my lab with a set of Realtek and Intel cards and have no problems.
3) Add a network interface card increase the available bandwidth
If one NIC is good does that mean the two are better? Well, in the case of NIC Teaming, network traffic is balanced across all active NICs, providing the ability to double or more of your available bandwidth depending on the number of NICs on your server. There are some catches we need to be familiar with. There are two methods you can configure: standalone switch and accessory switch.With Switch Independent, team configuration will work with any network switch. This means that you can use non-smart switches in your network and still use NIC Teaming because all information about how outbound traffic is distributed is managed by Windows Server 2012. The downside is that all incoming traffic is sent to only one network interface card which is not Distributed among all active NICs. This works great for web servers or FTB servers with heavy external traffic.
With Switch Dependent, team configuration involves involving network switches in the NIC Teaming configuration. Yes, you will need to configure both the key and the host to determine which links make up the team. Windows Server 2012 supports Teamic / Static Teaming, where you statically configure links, or dynamic Teaming Teaming using a protocol such as Link Aggregation Control (LACP), which dynamically determines the links that are connected between the host and the switch. Both modes allow both inbound and outbound traffic to approach the practical bandwidth of team members because the team is seen as a single route. This works great on any server that has heavy inbound and outbound traffic.
4) NIC Teaming provides fault tolerance
Just by adding a second NIC and creating a team, you have built-in fault tolerance. One bad card or cable does not take the rest of the team members down below. As an added bonus, if you use Switch Independent, you can connect your team members to different switches, so if the switch comes out, you still have team members providing network connectivity. You can even set the Network Interface Card (NIC) as a Standby Adapter so that the device fails (NIC), or when the cable is cut off or becomes a port on the switch in case of disconnection, the standby adapter becomes active and bears the workload.
5) GUI or PowerShell?
With the Teaming NIC included in Windows Server 2012, you'll get both. Therefore, if you want the GUI to point and click Configure or prefer the "old way" to type commands, Microsoft has covered them. If your preferences are the GUI, you can enable NIC Teaming from Server Manager and go to the properties screen for the server you want to enable and configure NIC Teaming. For PowerShell users, you can run the Get-Command-Module NetLBFO cmdlets to see a list of 13 cmdlets that can be used to manage NIC Teaming.
Configuration
To create a NIC Team, open the Server Manager and look for the NIC Teaming field. Click on Disabled:Conclusion
In this blog post we learned the “hows and whys” of the new NIC teaming feature in Windows Server 2012. At this point you understand the benefits of NIC teamings, as well as the basics of how to create and manage a NIC team by using either Server Manager or PowerShell.
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NIC Teaming