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Chapter 5: Key Protocols and Interfaces
86
Adapter Teaming
Teaming provides traffic load balancing and redundant adapter operation
in the event that a network connection fails. When multiple Allied Telesyn
adapters are installed in the same server, they can be grouped into teams.
Each team can be configured on the server with up to 8 ports. If traffic is
not identified on any of the adapter team members connections due to
failure of the adapter, cable, switch port, or switch (where the teamed
adapters are attached to separate switches), the load distribution is
reevaluated and reassigned among the remaining team members. In the
event that all of the primary adapters are down, the hot standby adapter
becomes active. Existing sessions are maintained, causing no user
impact.
BASP supports four schemes of load balancing: Smart Load Balancing,
Link Aggregation (802.3ad), Generic Link Aggregation (Trunking), and
Smart Load Balance Auto-Failback Disable. These schemes are
described in the following sections.
Smart Load
Balancing
(SLB)™
The implementation of load balancing is based on IP flow. This feature
supports balancing IP traffic across multiple adapters (that is, team
members) in a bi-directional manner. In this mode, all adapters in the team
have separate MAC addresses. It provides automatic fault detection and
dynamic failover to other team members or to a hot standby member. This
is done independently of the layer 3 protocol (IP, IPX, or Net Beui). It
works with existing layer 2 and 3 switches.
Link Aggregation
(802.3ad)
This mode supports Link Aggregation and conforms to the IEEE 802.3ad
(LACP) specification. Configuration software allows you to dynamically
configure which adapters you want to participate in a given team. If there
are 4 adapters in the system, you can select between 2 and 4 adapters to
participate in the team.
If the link partner is not correctly configured for 802.3ad link configuration,
errors are detected and noted. With this mode, all adapters in the team are
configured to receive packets for the same MAC address. The outbound
load-balancing scheme is determined by our BASP driver. The team’s link
partner determines the load-balancing scheme for inbound packets. In this
mode, at least one of the link partners must be in the active mode.
Generic Link
Aggregation
(Trunking)
This mode is very similar to 802.3ad in that you need to configure all of the
adapters in the team to receive packets for the same MAC address.
However, generic link aggregation mode does not provide LACP or
marker protocol support. This mode supports a variety of environments
where the NICs’ link partners are statically configured to support a
proprietary trunking mechanism. For instance, this mode could be used to
support Lucent’s "OpenTrunk" or Cisco’s Fast EtherChannel (FEC).