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NIC teaming for performance - switch config needed?

Discussion in 'Networking (Hardware & Software)' started by joescat, 2013/02/01.

  1. 2013/02/01
    joescat

    joescat Inactive Thread Starter

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    Server 2003 Standard (probably not important). The nics installed in the server are set up for teaming . . . both are combined into one ip address in the driver, and the connection for this "teamed" adapter shows 2gb/s (x2 the 1gb/s for each nic). So that's working as desired.

    Both are connected to the same managed network switch (a Dell branded switch). I've always wondered if it was beneficial to try and configure the switch to combine the two ports, or if the switch was smart enough to combine the network traffic as it seems to? I forget what the proper term is for the switch, "port trunking" comes to mind?
     
    joescat,
    #1
  2. 2013/02/01
    TonyT

    TonyT SuperGeek Staff

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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

    Unless you have 50 or more client computers I wouldn't even bother binding adapters or aggregating ports. The bottleneck is always going to be the client's adapter anyway.

    Thus, you can feed 2 gb/sec to the switch but the switch can only feed 1 gb/sec to a client. Also, the aggregation MUST be the same type on the server as on the switch, otherwise a mismatch occurs and all is nor naught.

    I've never done it and just recently read a little about it, but IMHO is not worth attempting unless done on a very large network that really needs it. Also, Windows doesn't natively support aggregation as such and you must use a 3rd party software to accomplish it in servers less than Server 2012. Thus there must be an added CPU load as a result and is that load worth the tradeoff? I don't know.
     
    TonyT,
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  4. 2013/02/22
    joescat

    joescat Inactive Thread Starter

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    There are about 75 clients, and we're doing document scanning and processing so the network load on the server is quite high. Apart from going to 10GB/s hardware which I don't have access to, I'm trying to eek out all the performance I can. The server is using Intel nics, which have adapter teaming built into the drivers.

    CPU load isn't not an issue, storage throughput then network are the concerns on this system. So yes CPU load is definitely a worthwhile trade.

    My question though remains, do I NEED to configure the smart switch to aggregate the ports I've teamed, or since it's a smart switch, does it figuring out the teamed connection suffice? A multiple path to the server doesn't seem to be created, I just want to make sure I'm missing an ideal setup.
     
    joescat,
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  5. 2013/02/22
    TonyT

    TonyT SuperGeek Staff

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    TonyT,
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