Dell Intel PRO Family of Adapters - Manual (Page 27)

Configuration Monitoring
You can set up monitoring between an SFT team and up to five IP addresses. This allows you to detect link failure bey-
ond the switch. You can ensure connection availability for several clients that you consider critical. If the connection
between the primary adapter and all of the monitored IP addresses is lost, the team will failover to the secondary
adapter.
Adaptive/Receive Load Balancing (ALB/RLB)
Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB) is a method for dynamic distribution of data traffic load among multiple physical chan-
nels. The purpose of ALB is to improve overall bandwidth and end station performance. In ALB, multiple links are
provided from the server to the switch, and the intermediate driver running on the server performs the load balancing
function. The ALB architecture utilizes knowledge of Layer 3 information to achieve optimum distribution of the server
transmission load.
ALB is implemented by assigning one of the physical channels as Primary and all other physical channels as Sec-
ondary. Packets leaving the server can use any one of the physical channels, but incoming packets can only use the
Primary Channel. With Receive Load Balancing (RLB) enabled, it balances IP receive traffic. The intermediate driver
analyzes the send and transmit loading on each adapter and balances the rate across the adapters based on des-
tination address. Adapter teams configured for ALB and RLB also provide the benefits of fault tolerance.
NOTES:
l ALB teaming requires that the switch not be set up for teaming and that spanning tree protocol is turned
off for the switch port connected to the network adapter in the server.
l ALB does not balance traffic when protocols such as NetBUI and IPX* are used.
l You may create an ALB team with mixed speed adapters. The load is balanced according to the
adapter's capabilities and bandwidth of the channel.
l All members of ALB and RLB teams must be connected to the same subnet.
Virtual Machine Load Balancing
Virtual Machine Load Balancing (VMLB) provides transmit and receive traffic load balancing across Virtual Machines
bound to the team interface, as well as fault tolerance in the event of switch port, cable, or adapter failure.
The driver analyzes the transmit and receive load on each member adapter and balances the traffic across member
adapters. In a VMLB team, each Virtual Machine is associated with one team member for its TX and RX traffic.
If only one virtual NIC is bound to the team, or if Hyper-V is removed, then the VMLB team will act like an AFT team.
NOTES:
l VMLB does not load balance non-routed protocols such as NetBEUI and some IPX* traffic.
l VMLB supports from two to eight adapter ports per team.
l You can create a VMLB team with mixed speed adapters. The load is balanced according to the lowest
common denominator of adapter capabilities and the bandwidth of the channel.
l An Intel AMT enabled adapter cannot be used in a VLMB team.
Static Link Aggregation
Static Link Aggregation (SLA) is very similar to ALB, taking several physical channels and combining them into a single
logical channel.
This mode works with:
l Cisco EtherChannel capable switches with channeling mode set to "on"
l Intel switches capable of Link Aggregation
l Other switches capable of static 802.3ad
The Intel teaming driver supports Static Link Aggregation for:
l Fast EtherChannel (FEC): FEC is a trunking technology developed mainly to aggregate bandwidth between
switches working in Fast Ethernet. Multiple switch ports can be grouped together to provide extra bandwidth.
These aggregated ports together are called Fast EtherChannel. Switch software treats the grouped ports as a
single logical port. An end node, such as a high-speed end server, can be connected to the switch using FEC.