Questions[network-teaming](server)

I have setup a server and I have 2 internet connections, I have tried several attempts at getting this to work properly.

In the RRAS I have successfully added into NAT 2x WAN NICs and a LAN NIC and I was seeing traffic being Sent & Received from both Internet WAN Routers, it was a little chaotic and believe had a lot of lost packets as I kept having to F5 websites.. but nonetheless it worked well enough to give me impressions of a faster internet.. (4pm-11pm internet here is horrid! so the 2nd connection helped I could see the benefit... Just F5 a few times tho!)

When I configure RRAS to have the 1 Teamed WAN for some reason the 2nd NIC wont receive any data. I can see it sending packets when browsing websites but nothing is received. I can see what NIC is doing what from the Team Configuration window.

I read a great document about NIC teaming but am still unclear on a few things. I have tried several IP configurations.

I hope to have a few questions answered.

for clarity I am using windows server 2016, NIC Teaming is Switch Independent Mode, Dynamic.

Questions.

1. Do Both WAN Internet routers need to be on the same Subnet Mask? eg 255.255.255.0

2. Does the LAN need to be on the same Subnet mask as WAN? eg 255.255.255.0

3. Should both WAN Routers be on the same IP Address Range or Different, EG WAN 1 Router IP:192.168.0.1 / SN:255.255.255.0 / GW:192.168.0.1 and have WAN 2 Router 192.168.0.2 / SN:255.255.255.0 / GW:192.168.0.2 or should WAN 2 Router be WAN 2 Router 192.168.1.1 / SN:255.255.255.0 / GW:192.168.1.1

I am hoping to get the right answer so I can correctly configure my routers and network and then properly troubleshoot why it doesn't work.

Thankyou Kindly,. Shaun

As per subject: I have some HP servers that support NIC teaming (O.S. is Windows Server 2008 R2), and I have a Cisco switch that supports Etherchannel.

Do I need to configure a channel on the switch for teamed NICs of each server in order to take fully advantage of NIC teaming, or is this simply not needed?

I've tried searching around (even on this site!), but I've found quite contradictory answers.

I'm not worried about having to configure the switch, if this is going to provide actual benefits; my main concern is about how this would subsequently force me (or some other people which may even not know at all what an Etherchannel is) to connect each server to specific switch ports in order for it to work. The whole "switch ports are not all equal" thing is something I'd very like to avoid, unless it provided real benefits.

Cisco Catalyst 2960S Switch 
Intel Dual Port NIC (teamed)
BroadComm Quad Port NIC (teamed 2 ports)

We hired a contractor to setup a fairly simple SQL cluster and SAN storage. With the above switch and NICs, they have teamed two cards on each server (3 servers total) for the domain network communication. There is no problem with the NIC teams, they are functioning fine, I have tested failover of each (unplug one of the cords).

The question I have is, would I gain any benefit from also creating an EtherChannel in my switch for each of these NIC teams? The contractor has not done this, and although everything is working fine, I want to get the top performance and reliability of this buildout.

I'm running several Dell R710's, each of which is outfitted with 4 x Broadcom BCM5709C nics.

Two of these R710's are running Hyper-V and a third is running SQL Server 2008, each running Windows Server 2008 R2. The fourth is running Windows Storage Server 2008.

I've set up teamed nics on the Storage Server and so far it's running flawlessly.

I've tried setting it up on the servers running Hyper-V to test but it's difficult once you have Hyper-V up and running as once interfaces are assigned to Hyper-V they're not available for teaming. I've yet to figure this one out.

My question is what would be the best use of these nics? This is a single domain network. As far as I can see teaming would be ideal for fault tollerance (hardware level) and performance sake. I've read other viewpoints that suggest teaming is not all it's cracked up to be. Also, Microsoft apparently does not officially support teaming and Hyper-V has it's own issues with it as well, although disabling LSO seems to be an option in the event of performance issues.

Anybody? Best use of nics?

We have a two-node Windows Server 2008 R2 fail-over cluster that's hosting about a dozen instances of SQL Server. The nodes each have four network adapters in them (a pair of dual-port Broadcom gigabit cards).

The heartbeat network is handled by a crossover cable, but for the three remaining adapters on each server, should these ports be teamed? I would like the traffic to be balanced across these adapters instead of overloading one primary port, but not if teaming them will cause other problems. I can find plenty of advice that you should never team the heartbeat adapter, but there seems to be nothing definitive about teaming the public adapters.

Thanks for your help!