Teaming: broadcom netxtreme bcm57xx user guide, Teaming, Overview – Dell Broadcom NetXtreme Family of Adapters User Manual

Page 6: Load balancing and fault tolerance

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Teaming: Broadcom NetXtreme BCM57XX User Guide

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Teaming: Broadcom NetXtreme BCM57XX User Guide

Overview

Load Balancing and Fault Tolerance

NOTE: See

Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet Teaming Services

for detailed information on the following topics:

Glossary of Terms and Acronyms
Teaming Concepts
Software Components
Hardware Requirements
Supported Teaming by Processor
Configuring Teaming by Operating System
Supported Features by Team Type
Selecting a Team Type
Teaming Mechanisms
Architecture
Types of Teams
Driver Support by Operating System
Supported Teaming Speeds
Teaming and Other Advanced Networking Features
General Network Considerations
Application Considerations
Troubleshooting Teaming Problems
Frequently-Asked Questions
Event Log Messages

Overview

Adapter teaming allows you to group network adapters together to function as a team. The benefits of teaming include
allowing membership to VLANs, providing load balancing between adapters, and offering fault tolerance. These benefits can
be combined such that you can couple the functionality of load balancing for the load balance members and the capability of
employing a failover with having the team participate on different VLANs.

Broadcom Advanced Server Program (BASP) is the Broadcom teaming software for Windows Server 2008 operating systems.
For Windows operating systems, BASP is configured through the

Broadcom Advanced Control Suite (BACS)

utility. For Linux

operating systems, teaming is done with channel bonding (see

Teaming with Channel Bonding

).

BASP supports four types of load balancing teams:

Smart Load Balancing and Failover
Link Aggregation (802.3ad)
Generic Trunking (FEC/GEC)/802.3ad-Draft Static
SLB (Auto-Fallback Disable)

Load Balancing and Fault Tolerance

Teaming provides traffic load balancing and fault tolerance (redundant adapter operation in the event that a network
connection fails). When multiple adapters are installed in the same system, they can be grouped with up to 16 teams.

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