Teaming Network Cards

[KWestos]

Hi

I have a HP blade (C3000) and a load of BL460C blades. What I want to do is team both network cards in each blade.

Please could someone let me know which is the easiest and most robust route to take

[mattstevenson2005]

we have a load of hp proliant servers and we use the HP network configuration utility to team our network cards. the network cards must be the hp ones and must be able to support teaming. I think you need to have the HP management software installed. it does not create a shortcut on the start menu for the teaming utility i found it by typing in cpqteam.exe in to the windows search option that is the config utility you need to team your nics

Cheers

Matt

[saundersmatt]

Having just done this for 16 identical blades. Ensure that you install the Proliant support packs cp010387.exe to update the broadcom drivers and then cp010377.exe to update the teaming utility. Launch the teaming utility with hpteam.cpl, this will run on server core installations.

Matt

[m25man]

If you are connecting to an HP Procurve Switch you should have no problems, however if you are connecting to anything else you may need to configure LACP/LAG correctly otherwise you may find that you end up with a fail over team as opposed to load balanced team.

The network teaming drivers normally have a configuration test so you can check the switch compatability.

If the team has configured correctly Windows should report that the Virtual Team is connected @ 2GB
If it only says 1GB then you are in fail over mode not LAG.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation]Link aggregation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

WARNING! HP Servers/Blades have current issues with iLO2 management drivers, firmware and ASR (Automatic Server Recovery)
If you have an incorrectly configured team or switch, in the event of a switch lockout caused by a network storm or excessive broadcasting the teaming drivers can report the link loss to the iLO and the server will take it upon itself to Reboot without warning!

So much so that some HP Admins are disabling the ASR feature pending a PSP update or driver rollback.