Using NIC teaming on your hypervisor

[JaredBusch]

Re: Backup server - Software layout

@fuznutz04 said in Backup server - Software layout:

@jaredbusch said in Backup server - Software layout:

I use teams, even if there is only one NIC in the team most of the time, because I can add and remove NICs without impacting the higher layers.

Good idea. This server I just got has the onboard GB NICs, but also 2 dual port Intel GB NICs as well. I could create a BIG team if I wanted.

As stated, I always use a NIC team just to abstract things one more way and to not need to deal with failures.

In the SMB, there is little need for LACP to be setup most of the time. Hell, you are lucky if the switches even support it a lot of the time.

But by using a team in load balancing or Switch Independent mode, you will generally gain throughput without the hassle.

This is because, while no single connection can ever be faster than your link speed (typically 1Gbps currently), many applications are multi-threaded and will thus have more than a single connection going and will usually get balanced out multiple links.

On Hyper-V I always do it from powershell, immediately after installation, directly on the Hyper-V host prior to setting up anything else.
New-NetLbfoTeam - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/netlbfo/new-netlbfoteam

On VMWare, I have no idea how to get screenshots anymore as I have no access to any client using it right now, but it is very straightforward to setup. If someone with a VMWare rig could post screenshots, that would be nice.

On KVM, I usually use Cockpit to set it up as I do not do it often enough and always break shit when I try to do it any other way.

[AdamF]

Good stuff. Thanks for pointing this up and writing it up.