Understanding everything about NIC Teaming

DEFsoul
3 min readDec 18, 2020

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Would you like servers to seamlessly remain available even once a core switch dies at work? Do you want to have your server access multiple VLANs without betting on a specific pitchers particular drivers? Want to modify your networking configuration for physical and virtual hosts in your environment? If you answered affirmative to any of these euphemistically questions , then this article is for you. Let NIC Teaming do that.

What is NIC TEAMING?

NIC Teaming is the method of merging multiple network cards along for performance and redundancy reasons. Microsoft presents it as NIC teaming, however other pitchers may refer to this as bonding, balancing or agglomeration. The process is the same regardless which path is used or what it is referred to as . Software running on the computer will communicate with the virtual network adapter. This virtual network adapter is liable for distributing the network information between the various network cards within the system.

What is NIC Teaming with an example.

Let’s imagine about a server with three network cards in one NIC team. The operating system will have one virtual network adapter that software will communicate with. This virtual network adapter connects to the teaming process that determines the way to send and receive data using the network cards in the system. If a network card was to crash, the teaming solution would use the remaining other two network cards to send and receive traffic. This is done without the administrator having to configure anything by himself , it is all handled by the teaming solution. The only configuration that an administrator needs to execute is to add a physical network card to a teaming solution.

Difference between NIC teaming and bridging ?

NIC Teaming lets you create a NIC interface that spans one or multiple NIC adapters that are all on an identical subnet. NIC Bridging lets you to combine NIC adapters from completely different subnets to enable communication between the 2 subnets .

Different modes of NIC Teaming

Teaming Mode :The Teaming Mode determines how the server and switch(es) can split traffic between the multiple links. There are 3 different types of Teaming modes

· Switch Independent

· Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)

· Static

Load Balancing Mode : Load balancing mode verifies how the team will present interfaces for incoming data and determine what adapters to use for outgoing data.

· Address Hash

· Hyper-V Port

· Dynamic

The Team Interface VLAN

When you create a team , by default , it’ll create one team interface. The team interface contains a VLAN setting to tag traffic on an interface to a particular VLAN . Setting the team interface VLAN to a marked VLAN is typically only done once the team members that the NIC Team is created from use the ‘trunk’ mode .

After you process the team . you’ll be able to create multiple team interfaces on different VLAN’s.

Warning: Microsoft recommends that you never set the VLAN for an interface within a VM. Instead . use the Hyper-V switch advanced option ‘VLAN ID’ to define VLANs for a VM.

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