Windows Server NIC Teaming vs vNIC failover

[SparkMax]

I have a physical Windows 2022 server with one NIC connected to FI-A and another to FI-B. What is the best practice to setup NIC teaming? From Cisco doc,UCS B-Series/C-Series/S-Series/HyperFlex-Series Teaming, Bonding Options with the Cisco VIC Card - Cisco, it says to use Hyper-V port for load balancing. Does that still apply to Windows servers?

I'm currently reviewing connectivity on the server and noticed it has NIC teaming in OS and the vNICS in UCS have "Enable failover". Would like to keep one failover method and curious which will be better. If there's a reason to keep both, please let me know the benefits.

[Steven Tardy · Accepted solution]

UCS "Fabric Failover" is a nifty feature where the OS is presented a single vNIC, but that vNIC has two paths (one through FI-A and one through FI-B) where UCSM is in control and UCSM will only allow one path to be active at a time.

I typically recommend UCS "Fabric Failover" for baremetal OS.

It boils down to:
1) have OS config complex (teaming, etc)(wrong configuration makes network _very_ unhappy) or
2) have UCS automate/hide that complexity?

If the OS only needs a single (redundant) NIC to access the network, then UCS "Fabric Failover" is an excellent choice.

If the OS needs two links (so VMs can use both links for more overall bandwidth), then OS teaming with two vNICs makes more sense.

The teaming doc could be re-written to stipulate one rule:
  A given MAC address in a given VLAN can only egress a single vNIC at a time.

If you can't guarantee that with the OS network teaming configuration with two vNICs, then just use UCS "Fabric Failover" and present the OS with a single vNIC.

It is recommended to NOT use both two vNICs with UCS "Fabric Failover" and OS teaming as little benefit is gained since UCS "Fabric Failover" will prevent the vNICs from going down.

[SparkMax]

This helps so much! I've been looking at all sorts of docs to help me understand this. For our case, the UCS failover will be better option. Are there any additional drivers I need to install to have OS see both NICs as one? I'm thinking similar to how OS has MPIO installed for multiple data paths to a storage array and presents one LUN to OS.

Also, in NIC teaming, does selecting Hyper-V port for load balancing also apply to bare metal Windows servers?

[Steven Tardy]

No special OS driver needed, just the regular inbox or async Cisco enic driver.
UCSM fabric failover handles the network active-backup multipath automagically and transparently under the hood.

I'm not sure about the Windows NIC teaming question as I don't use enough Windows to know.