Overview on Windows Server and Hyper-V 2012 R2 NIC Teaming and SMB Multichannel

I know this is nothing new but since I had to mention the Whitepaper on NIC Teaming and the use of SMB Multichannel as well as the configuration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager in a couple of meetings I want to make sure you have an overview on my blog. Here is a no overview of Windows Server and Hyper-V NIC teaming and SMB Multichannel, to get redundant network configurations.

NIC Teaming

Windows Server NIC Teaming was introduced in Windows Server 2012 (Codename Windows Server 8). NIC teaming, also known as Load Balancing/Failover (LBFO), allows multiple network adapters to be placed into a team for the purposes of bandwidth aggregation, and/or traffic failover to maintain connectivity in the event of a network component failure.

NIC Teaming Recommendation

For designing, the default and recommended configuration is using NIC Teaming with Switch Independent and Dynamic, and in some scenarios where you have the write switches you can use LACP and Dynamic.

Download Windows Server 2012 R2 NIC Teaming (LBFO) Deployment and Management Whitepaper

This guide describes how to deploy and manage NIC Teaming with Windows Server 2012 R2.

You can find the Whitepaper on Windows Server 2012 R2 NIC Teaming (LBFO) Deployment and Management in the Microsoft Download Center.

SMB Multichannel

If you use Hyper-V over SMB, you can use SMB Multichannel as an even better mode to distribute SMB 3.0 traffic across different network adapters, or you could use a mix of both, NIC Teaming and SMB Multichannel. Check out my blog post about Hyper-V over SMB: SMB Multichannel, SMB Direct (RDMA) and Scale-Out File Server and Storage Spaces.

Configuration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Some months back, I also wrote some blog post about configuration of Hyper-V Converged Networking and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. This guide will help you to understand how you deploy NIC Teaming with System Center Virtual Machine Manager using the Logical Switch on Hyper-V hosts.