NIC Teaming

[guarddog]

I am in the market for a new switch, as I want to do some NIC teaming. I want to do some testing of distributed file systems and "need more power".

I have read over the suggestions on this thread, and it looks like something from the HP 1820 series of switches will do what I need for the price/performance/capacity.

But what about teaming? I have never tried it before, is it really as simple as enabling it on the PC and plugging in two NIC cables (or more). I don't want to purchase a new switch and then find out you need a switch with some type of special requirement to enable it at the switch level.

 

[Pete L.]

This really depends - There are a few ways to set up NIC Teaming, you didn't mentioned what Operating System you are talking about but there are usually a few different options.

Failover - Which will give you a backup connection if the primary goes down - Doesn't require any special configuration on the switch
Load Balancing - Switch Independent - This will load balance from the Operating System and will NOT need a special switch
Load Balancing - Switch Dependent - This will use some kind of "Bond" of LAG / LACP Group this will be switch dependent and need a switch that is "Managed" to support it.

It should also be mentioned that Windows Server 2008 and up as well as Windows 8 and up support SMB3 - Multi-channel this is also switch independent but doesn't share the same IP Address as each link will be set up with their own IP Address preferably on the same network and Windows will just discover / use the multiple links to increase bandwidth, this doesn't provide much fault tolerance though.

Oh and yes the switch should work fine