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NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012 Brings Simple,


Affordable Traffic Reliability and Load Balancing to your Cloud
Workloads
Yigal Edery [MSFT] 19 Jun 2012 8:15 PM 24

Hi,

Last week I had the pleasure of attending TechEd Orlando and staffing the Windows Networking booth.
We had a lot of people coming to the booth with great questions about networking technologies or just
curious to see what’s new. One of the most common questions that came up was – “I heard you now
have NIC teaming in the box. Can you show me? How does it work?”

Obviously, when you’re building a private cloud, having high availability at the network level is a critical
functionality, and doing it without the need to rely on 3rd party drivers or having to do some complicated
configurations is another way how Windows Server 2012 is truly a great platform to build your clouds with.

In this blog, Don Stanwyck, the program manager of the NIC teaming feature, explains this feature in depth.

Yigal

Windows Server 2012 is a cloud‐optimized OS, delivering the key capabilities for building scalable,
mission‐critical cloud environments. The new NIC Teaming capability in this release of Windows Server
bring continuous network availability and increased network performance, supporting greater VM density
and lower operational costs.

Cloud environments need continuous availability to meet the demanding needs of high‐density
workloads. In particular, downtime in network connectivity creates ill will with users and may affect
revenue. Service outages can result from network interface card ﴾NIC﴿ failures, network switch failures, or
even something as mundane as an accidentally disconnected cable. The trend to increase the density of VMs on a physical
server places even more pressure on the underlying network reliability – because a single outage can impact a variety of
services. As a result, datacenter operators require solutions that can quickly and automatically recover from connectivity
failures, while being easy to setup and manage.

At the same time, greater VM densities—and the push to virtualize demanding workloads such as media streaming—place
new requirements for bandwidth aggregation across the datacenter. In particular, having invested in redundant network
connectivity, datacenter operators should be able to make use of that spare capacity without requiring special hardware or
changes to application workloads. This aggregated network capacity ultimately reduces network infrastructure investment
and improves resource utilization.

Windows Server 2012 NIC Teaming provides transparent network failover and bandwidth aggregation. Uniquely, the
Windows solution is hardware‐independent and can be deployed under all existing workloads and applications on both
physical and virtualized servers.

What is NIC Teaming?

A solution commonly employed to solve the network availability and performance challenges is NIC Teaming. NIC
Teaming ﴾aka NIC bonding, network adapter teaming, Load balancing and failover, etc.﴿ is the ability to operate multiple

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NICs as a single interface from the perspective of the system. In Windows Server 2012, NIC Teaming provides two key
capabilities:

1. Protection against NIC failures by automatically moving the traffic to remaining operational members of the team,
i.e., Failover, and
2. Increased throughput by combining the bandwidth of the team members as though they were a single larger
bandwidth interface, i.e., bandwidth aggregation.

Many vendors have provided NIC teaming solutions for Windows Server, but these solutions shared many limitations.
Those solutions are typically tied to a particular NIC manufacturer, so you cannot always team together NICs from multiple
vendors. Many of the solutions do not integrate well with other networking features of Windows Server or with features
such as Hyper‐V. Finally, each of these NIC teaming solutions is managed differently, and most cannot be managed
remotely. As a result, it is not easy for an administrator to move from machine to machine in a heterogeneous
environment and know how to configure NIC teaming on each host.

NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2012 includes an integrated NIC Teaming solution that is easy to setup and manage, is vendor
independent, and that supports the performance optimizations provided by the underlying NICs.

NIC Teaming is easily managed through PowerShell or a powerful, intuitive UI ﴾the UI is layered on top of PowerShell﴿.
Teams can be created, configured, monitored, and deleted at the click of a mouse. Multiple servers can be managed at the
same time from the same UI. Through the power of PowerShell remote management the NIC Teaming UI can be run on
Windows 8 clients to remotely manage servers even when those servers are running Windows 2012 Server Core!

A team can include NICs from any vendor – and it can even include NICs from multiple vendors. This vendor‐agnostic
approach brings a common management model to even the most heterogeneous datacenter. New NICs can be added to
systems as needed and effortlessly integrated to the existing NIC Teaming configuration.

Finally, the team supports all the networking features that the underlying NICs support, so you don’t lose important
performance functionality implemented by the NIC hardware. The “no compromise” approach means that NIC Teaming
can be deployed with confidence on all servers.

NIC Teaming Configuration Options

NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012 supports two configurations that meet the needs of most datacenter administrators.

Customers who value route diversity ﴾in order to withstand switch failures﴿ can connect their hosts to different switches. In
this “Switch Independent Mode,” the switches are not aware that different interfaces on the server comprise a team.
Instead, all the teaming logic is done exclusively on the server. Many customers choose to operate in an active/active
mode, where traffic is spread across both NICs until a failure occurs. Historically some customers prefer to operate in an
active/standby mode where all the traffic is on one team member until a failure occurs. When a failure is detected all the
traffic moves to the standby team member. This mode of operation also can be created in Switch Independent mode
teaming. The real tradeoff is what happens when there is a failure. If you’ve configured active/standby then you will have
the same level of performance in a failure condition whereas you’ll have degraded performace if you go with the
active/active mode. On the other hand, when you don’t have a failure, you’ll have much greater bandwidth using
active/active.

In addition to achieving reliability, customers can also choose to aggregate bandwidth to a single external switch using
NIC Teaming. This is done by creating a team in a “Switch Dependent Mode” wherein all NICs that comprise the team are
connected to the same switch. There are two common varieties of Switch Dependent teams: Those that use no
configuration protocol, a method often called static or generic teaming, and a mode that uses the IEEE 802.1ax Link
Aggregation Control Protocol ﴾LACP﴿ to coordinate between the host and the switch. Both of these models are fully

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supported in Windows Server 2012. For more details on the modes of operation and load distribution schemes, please
refer to the NIC Teaming User’s Guide.

Switch Dependent Mode treats the members of the team as an aggregated big pipe with a minor restriction ﴾explained
below﴿. Each side balances the load between the team members independent of what the other side is doing. And, subject
to the minor restriction, the pipe is kept full in both directions.

What is that minor restriction? TCP/IP can recover from missing or out‐of‐order packets. However, out‐of‐order packets
seriously impact the throughput of the connection. Therefore, teaming solutions make every effort to keep all the packets
associated with a single TCP stream on a single NIC so as to minimize the possibility of out‐of‐order packet delivery. So, if
your traffic load comprises of a single TCP stream ﴾such as a Hyper‐V live migration﴿, then having four 1Gb/s NICs in an
LACP team will still only deliver 1 Gb/s of bandwidth since all the traffic from that live migration will use one NIC in the
team. However, if you do several simultaneous live migrations to multiple destinations, resulting in multiple TCP streams,
then the streams will be distributed amongst the teamed NICs.

Configuring NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012

As mentioned previously, NIC Teaming provides a rich PowerShell interface for configuring and managing teams either
locally or remotely. Moreover, for those who prefer a UI based management model, the NIC Teaming UI is a complete
management solution that runs PowerShell under the covers. Both PowerShell and UI administration are covered in depth
in the NIC Teaming User’s Guide. Below are some highlights that show just how easy it is to setup NIC Teaming.

Suppose you have a server with four NICs: NIC1, NIC2, NIC3, and NIC4. In order to put NIC1 and NIC2 in a team, you can
run this PowerShell command as an administrator:

New­NetLbfoTeam MyTeam NIC1,NIC2

When the command returns, you will have a team with the name “MyTeam” and team members NIC1 and NIC2, setup in
Switch Independent mode. It is also simple to make more advanced changes. For example the PowerShell cmdlet below
will create a team as an LACP team to be bound to the Hyper‐V switch.

New­NetLbfoTeam MyTeam NIC1,NIC2 –TeamingMode Lacp 
–LoadBalancingAlgorithm HyperVPorts

As noted earlier, you could use the UI instead to achieve the same results. The NIC Teaming UI can be invoked from Server
Manager or by invoking lbfoadmin.exe at a command prompt. The UI is available on Windows Server 2012 configurations
that have local UI and on Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 systems that run the Remote Server Administration Tools
﴾RSAT﴿. The UI can manage multiple servers simultaneously. .

Now you can create a new team. Select the NICs you want to team ﴾control‐click each NIC﴿ then right‐click the group and
click on Add to New Team:

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This will bring up the New Team dialog. Enter the team name.

You can configure the team further to support the teaming mode and other properties.

Now the team is set up. It is easy to make changes to the team through the Team TASKS dropdown or by right‐clicking on
the team.

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If you want to modify the team to be an active/standby team, simply right click on the team and select Properties.

This will bring up the Team Properties dialog. Click on the additional properties drop‐down, then the Standby adapter
drop‐down, and select the standby NIC.

After you select OK to apply the change you will see that the NIC is now in Standby mode:

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Summary

NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012 enables continuous network availability and increased network performance for all
workloads even when the team comprises of NICs from multiple vendors. NIC Teaming can be managed easily using
PowerShell or the built‐in NIC Teaming UI. NIC Teaming enables greater workload density while reducing operational
costs for your private, public, and hybrid cloud deployments.

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Comments

Murat Demirkiran 1 Jul 2012 1:11 PM


Great explanation. Great Technology.

3 Oct 2012 9:19 AM


Pavol

Hi,

how is the MAC of the team been determined? The foll. explanation: "In switch independent / address hash
configuration the team will use the MAC address of the primary team member" is a little bit vague I think. At least
that's not what I was able to test:

1. I've set up a "switch independent / address hash conf." team

2. the MAC address of the team matched the address of the primary ﴾the first NIC I've added to the team﴿ team
member

3. after reboot the MAC address of the team matches the second NIC added to the team

How to work past this if you want to have your IPs assigned dynamically ﴾DHCP﴿?

Thank you for your reply.

Best regards,

8 Oct 2012 5:31 PM


Neel

Good One!!!

10 Oct 2012 4:03 PM


Don Stanwyck

Pavol ‐ the MAC address of the team is the MAC address of the first NIC in the team that we see after a reboot.  If
you want a static IP address for the team you can assign it directly to the team.  If you want a static MAC address
for the team you can also set that on the advanced properties of the primary team interface.

‐‐don

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26 Nov 2012 10:19 AM
MMF

What exactly is the difference to using a network team provided in Server 2003 ‐ 2008 R2?

Thomas W Shinder ‐ MSFT 27 Nov 2012 12:50 PM


In Windows Server 2012 NIC Teaming is a feature of the operating system. In the past, you had to depend on NIC
vendor driver support for NIC Teaming, and then you would only team that vendor's NICs. In Windows Server
2012, you can team any NICs from any vendor. Also, regarding the question of the differences between the
vendor driven and operating system NIC teaming‐ with the Windows Server 2012 NIC Teaming there's now a
standard set of built‐in features, while in the past, each vendor teaming implemented a different set of
capabilities.

15 Feb 2013 11:20 AM


Yoda

Hi there,

what´s about NIC‐teaming with Hyper‐V Hosts für the virtual Switch? Is this a supported scenario?

18 Feb 2013 10:20 PM


strange error

I have a Windows 2012 Data Center Edition installation where all 4 NIC's are showing as "can not be added to a
team" but there are no teams configured.  We're trying to create a team but since we can not added any
interfaces it's impossible.  Anyone else run across this?

topokin 23 Mar 2013 4:24 PM


I have Windows Server 2012 Full installation on HP DL 360p G8. Teaming is configured with 2 nic through the
"Server Manager" console, however I observed that the MAC‐Address of the "Teamed‐NIC" often alternates itself
between MAC‐Address of both physical NICs.

Is this a normal behaviour or there is something still missing. The teaming is configured in LACP mode.

Since this system is to serve as a License‐Server and some licenses configuration are MAC‐Address dependency,
how can I overcome this random chages

Jeffrey Tippet [MSFT] 16 Apr 2013 3:11 AM


@strange error

The NIC Teaming GUI will show an adapter as not "teamable" if the adapter meets any of these criteria:

‐ The NIC is already in a team or a Hyper‐V switch

‐ The NIC is used for kernel debugging

‐ The NIC is not Ethernet ﴾the driver's INF has *PhysicalMediaType set to something other than 0 or 14﴿

‐ The NIC cannot bind to TCPIP or TCPIPv6 ﴾it's ok if the binding isn't currently enabled; the NIC is only blocked if
the checkbox doesn't show up at all﴿

Additionally, if the "Hide adapters that cannot be added to a team" setting in the GUI is checked, then the GUI
will also hide a NIC if it meets any of these criteria:

‐ The NIC is not currently bound to TCPIP or TCPIPv6

‐ The NIC is marked as "hidden" by the NIC driver ﴾the driver's INF has Characteristics with bit 8 set for
NCF_HIDDEN﴿

16 Apr 2013 7:04 AM


Don Stanwyck

The NIC Teaming Deployment guide is published with answers to most questions.  Please take a few minutes and
download the guide from www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx and read it.  If you have questions or suggestions
that we should incorporate into the next version of the guide please let me know.

Yoda ‐ your question is answered in the guide.  We do support teaming under the Hyper‐V switch.

Topokin ‐ please see the answer I posted above in response to Pavol.

‐‐don stanwyck

16 May 2013 5:34 PM


Steve

Thanks

10 Jun 2013 8:43 AM


Rashid

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Please answer for my question..

I have configured a NIC teaming in Server 2012 using two NICs.. so what will happen if i have removed a single
cable from the any of the NIC port be a part of NIC Teaming

Thomas W Shinder ‐ MSFT 10 Jun 2013 2:23 PM


Hi Rashid,

It will fail over to the other NIC.

HTH,

Tom

19 Jun 2013 3:12 AM


Philip Elder

Hi,

Please update the Teaming Word Doc and your own blog post.

It is "HyperVPort" and NOT "HyperVPorts"

In documentation this is one area where COPY & PASTE are deadly.

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