NIC Teaming on CM with 2000.2.7

[maharris]

I happened to notice on one of our new installs that there were 3 lan connections active. My previous encounters with teaming were very clear that you were supposed to install it in Fault Tolerant mode only, so I went to dig up the teaming doc to send to our tech - but this is 2000.2.7, and the install guide specifies that you leave it in Automatic mode! Although the initiall description still sounds like they are thinking of fault tolerance. Teaming stats show this one automatically learned load balancing. The 2000.2.6 teaming doc still specifies choosing fault tolerant mode. Is this new way OK, did something change, or should I fix my server? Thanks!

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/voiceapp/ps378/prod_installation_guide09186a00803a0032.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/voiceapp/ps378/prod_installation_guide09186a0080203ec2.html

Mary Beth

[dweiner]

I haven't tried it with 2000.2.7 but it is definitely NOT OK to have more than 1 IP address on the server. In FT mode you will see 3 NICs on the server - the 2 real ones and the one virtual NIC created when you install the NIC teaming, however there will be only one IP address on the server.

Don

[maharris]

I am pretty sure (but will verify tomorrow) that there was only 1 ip address - what caught my eye was the amount of activity on all 3 icons - it seems like normally the one in standby does not flicker as often, but maybe that was just a trick of my eye. When I saw the auto mode, and that it was in load sharing, I remembered all the warnings from earlier version. I would guess that in those versions there was also one address shared, but it still seemed like it was a bad thing, and I know that some customers have had issues with load sharing on just miscellaneous servers, and maybe it is really dependant on how good the drivers are. I will see how it looks tomorrow, and maybe someone else will have been running this way for a while - I am a little nervous because there is not much going on here yet, and I would hate to run into trouble when things ramp up.

Thanks!

Mary Beth