Teaming Network Cards

[Todd Allen_1]

Hi,
does anyone know how to team nic's in windows 2003 standard server SP 2 that is installed as a guest OS on ESX 3.5u4. the windows server see's 4 VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter network cards. The physical hardware is HP BL680c G5 blade server.
Is there a driver/configuration steps that need to be followed to get teaming to work.

Thanks for your help.

[WFHC-WI · Accepted solution]

Hi Todd,

See this post:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/94942

good luck

[Abhay Kumar_4]

Hi Todd,

you can check with below link.

http://download.cnet.com/HP-Network-Teaming-Virtual-Miniport-Driver/3000-2112_4-80628.html


OR


you can check with post

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1137825&prodNameId=3288122&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-7270a56016c04f62a3a5f1a56e&mode=3

Good Luck

[Todd Allen_1]

Abhay Kumar thank you for the links but the first one is no longer on HP's web site and the other I have already tried.

[Pieter 't Hart]

>>>
the windows server see's 4 VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter network cards
<<<
IMO the "hardware" vendor must supply support for teaming. so that would be VMWare not HP.

Furthermore these virtual adapters are connected to VMWare virtual switches. For this to work, they must support teaming (or link aggregation) too!

In the first post there is a reference to a thread that states communication is at bus-speed (for VMWare it's memory-to-memory ) even though windows reports 1GB link.
so there's no need to combine two NICs so windws can report 2GB.

[VORAV]

It is possible to script the load balancing of a Virtual Switch by using the vimsh command.

The basic command syntax is:

vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy --nicteaming-policy [load balance option] [vSwitch#]"

For each of the 4 load balancing options there is a different command option:
Load Balance Type Command Option
Port ID loadbalance_srcid
IP Hash loadbalance_ip
MAC loadbalance_srcmac
Failover Only failover_explicit

For example to change vSwitch1 from the default Port ID to IP address load balancing the command line would look like this:

vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy --nicteaming-policy loadbalance_ip vSwitch1"

This should help those who like to run automated scripted ESX builds. Note that if using in conjunction with esxcfg commands to create and bind vSwtiches you'll need to run a service management restart and put a 20 second or so sleep to allow background processes to complete, eg: this script creates a vSwitch, labels it Production, binds vmnic 1 & 2 to it, restarts hostd, pauses for 20 seconds then modifies loadbalancing of the vSwitch to the MAC based option.

esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch -A Production vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic2 vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic1 vSwitch2
vimsh -n -e "/internalsvc/refresh_network"
vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy --nicteaming-policy loadbalance_srcmac vSwitch2"

[Todd Allen_1]

thank you vorav that helps.