Windows Teaming Driver Available for M81KR / P81E VIC

[Robert Burns]

Greetings All,

A teaming driver for Windows has been released for the M81KR/P81E VIC (aka Palo) adaptor.

The driver is included in the ISO bundle for Windows Utilities

• The driver will be supported on UCS 2.0 for B-series can be found here http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=283853163&flowid=25821&softwareid=283850975&os=Windows&release=2.0(1b)&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest
• Please refer to HCL at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10477/prod_technical_reference_list.html

           for details)

• Testing on C-series has also been completed and we expect to update the C-series (C-series release UCS 1.4) HCL and ISO shortly
• User guide is available at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/vic_drivers/install/Windows/2.0/b_Cisco_VIC_Drivers_for_Windows_Installation_Guide.html

The teaming driver will be supported on Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  Hyper-V will not be supported at this time.

Supported teaming modes:

     • Active-Backup (with or without failback)

     • Active-Active (transmit load balancing)

     • 802.3ad LACP

Supported load balancing methods:

     • TCP connection

     • Source and destination MAC address

     • MAC address and IP address

Supported hashing options for load balancing:

     • XOR hash

     • CRC hash

Regards,

Robert

[Robert Leibold]

Robert,

I went to the download site but am not seeing a new releast, still the 2.01(f) from January.  Am I looking in the wrong place for these drivers or has the download site not been updated yet?

Thanks,

Bob

[Robert Burns]

Robert,

The 2.0(1f) iso is the one you want.  It was re-spun with the same version name.

I'm also ensuring the latest release notes detail this - currently it's lacking.

Thanks for catching this.

Regards,

Robert

[Robert Leibold]

Robert,

I just re-downloaded the ucs-bxxx-drivers.2.0.1f.iso file and I am not seeing any updated drivers on it.

Thanks,

Bob

[Robert Burns]

The drivers should be there:

Regards,

Robert

[Robert Leibold]

Not sure about anyone else, but the image in your latest post is not coming through on the forum, just get a box with a red x.  Not sure if that is a screenshot of the files I should be using off the ISO or something else.

Thanks,

Bob

[Robert Burns]

I re-uploaded the screenshot.  The drivers are in \windows\network\cisco\m81kr\win2k8\....

There's no installer app, you just update the .inf driver from windows with the ones in the folder path above.

Robert

[Robert Leibold]

That's the same driver I already have installed.   If you look at the date on the files, it's from back on August of 2011, so doesn't appear to be a new driver.  I went ahead and re-installed the driver and it installed it, but it just came back with the same driver version as before, so it doesn't seem to be updated, at least the date on the file and version number aren't updated, maybe it's updated under the covers.

But trying to follow the instructions to install the NIC teaming driver protocol says there aren't any protocols available when pointing to the directories you have listed above.

I must be missing something here, but it just seems like the download site doesn't have the new drivers yet.

Thanks,

Bob

[Robert Burns]

Robert,

Our apologies for the confusion.  We had some internal issue and have re-published the driver iso to include the driver this time.  Same iso should contain the correct driver & version avaiable here: http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=283853163&flowid=25821&softwareid=283850975&os=Windows&release=2.0(1b)&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest

Let me know if you have any further issues.

Regards,

Robert

[Robert Leibold]

Robert,

Thanks for tracking that down.  I can confirm that the teaming driver is available on the ISO you provided.

Couple of questions:

1. It says the driver supports 802.3ad LACP.  Would this be possible on B series blades given that the fabric interconnects cannot be put in a VPC pair (at least as of now)?

2. It says the driver supports Active-Active (transmit load balancing).  What will the team use for a MAC address?  Will it create a virtual MAC address for the team or will it pick one of the two "physical" MAC's and use that for the team? 

Just confused on how the teaming will work.

Thanks,

Bob

[Robert Burns]

LACP teaming is only supported on C-Series (P81E) at this time.  LACP requires upstream clusters/teaming and the Fabric Interconnects are not clustered switches.  There may be a future enhancement to allow blades with multiple adaptors to be teamed to the same FI - but that's not yet committed.

There is a virtual team interface created which will use the primary Ethernet's MAC address.  This MAC will be one of the MACs defined with the Service Profile of UCS already.

Regards,

Robert

[Robert Leibold]

Robert,

Thanks for the info.  Understand about LACP. 

As for transmit load balancing, how will that work on a blade?  If the team is using the MAC address from the primary Ethernet interface, will the traffic still be transmit load balanced across the two NICs?  So the one MAC will look active on both the fabric interconnects at the same time from a transmit perspective, but inbound traffic will still always come down the primary fabric?

Thanks,

Bob

[Robert Burns]

Exactly right.  The same MAC would be used to transmit when sourced from either vNIC. Return traffic would flow from upstream down the primary interface path only.  Balance occurs only outbound, not inbound.

Regards,

Robert

[varrow_jgillow · Accepted solution]

I set up teaming yesterday on a couple B200 M2 blades with M81KR, wrote a short blog post with screen shots here:

http://jeremygillow.varrowblogs.com/?p=155

Jeremy

[Robert Burns]

Excellent job Jeremy - This was on my to-do list, but you've beat me to it.  Thanks for the shout out too.

Regards,

Robert

P.S. One caveat you may want to call out is that the enictool utility must be ran with elevated/admin privileges.  Otherwise it will not have access to perform query and creation tasks.