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4. On the Select Type page, select External Network, and click Next.
5. On the Name page, enter a meaningful name for the network and description.
6. On the Network settings page, specify the following:
• NIC. Select the NIC that you want XenServer to use to send and receive data from the network.
• VLAN. If the network is a VLAN, enter the VLAN ID (or "tag").
• MTU. If the network uses jumbo frames, enter a value for the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) between
1500 to 9216. Otherwise, leave the MTU box at its default value of 1500.
If you will be configuring many virtual machines to use this network, you may want to select the
Automatically add this network to new virtual machines check box so the network is added by default.
7. Click Finish. When you add a network or change networking using XenCenter, the same networks and
settings are automatically configured on all the other hosts in the pool.
3.2.1. Bonding NICs
NIC bonding, also known as NIC teaming, can improve server resiliency by using two or more physical NICs as if
they were a single, high-performing channel. This section only provides a very brief overview of bonding. Before
configuring bonds for use in a production environment, Citrix recommends reading more in-depth information
about bonding, such as that in the Designing XenServer Network Configurations guide.
XenServer supports three bond modes: Active/active, active/passive (active/backup), and LACP. Active/active
provides load balancing and redundancy for VM-based traffic. For other types of traffic (storage and
management), active/active cannot load balance traffic. As a result, LACP or multipathing are better choice for
storage traffic. For information about multipathing, see the Configuring iSCSI Multipathing Support for XenServer
guide or the XenServer Administrator's Guide. For more information about bonding, see the Designing XenServer
Network Configurations guide.
LACP options are not visible or available unless you configure the vSwitch as the network stack, as described in
the XenServer Administrator's Guide. Likewise, your switches must support the IEEE 802.3ad standard. The switch
must contain a separate LAG group configured for each LACP bond on the host. For more details about creating
LAG groups, see XenServer Administrator's Guide.
To bond NICs
1. Ensure that the NICs you want to bind together (the bond slaves) are not in use: you must shut down any
VMs with virtual network interfaces using the bond slaves prior to creating the bond. After you have created
the bond, you will need to reconnect the virtual network interfaces to an appropriate network.
2. Select the server in the Resources pane then click on the NICs tab and click Create Bond.