Intel NIC teaming

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I have two servers that transfer a lot of data between the two. I currently have them connect with a gigabit link. Both servers have relatively large arrays that are capable of more than gigabit speeds. One of them has a quad port Intel NIC that supports teaming. I would like to buy another NIC for the other server and team all 4 ports on both to increase my transfer speeds.

I know that one server with a load balancing team can carry on four transfers to different machines at roughly gigabit speeds but I am not sure if it will work for a single transfer. Will teaming 4 NICs on each server allow me to achieve greater than gigabit speeds on a single file transfer?

The NICs support two types of load balancing that I could use: Adaptive Load Balancing and Static Link Aggregation. Which one of these would best suit my situation? I know SLA requires my switch to support it which it does.

Also any tips you may have from past experience are greatly appeciated. Thanks.
 
I'll quote from my project worklog thread. You'll have no problems using all that bandwidth if what you're writing to can handle it. And I'm using Link Aggregation.

LittleMe said:
Follow up screenshot while doing bandwidth testing. I took the box to work and pulled some data across to another server. That server has a 3-card team for a total of 3Gbps and also has 8 Cheetah 15K.5 300GB U320 drives in a RAID0. It pulled a steady 2,800Mbps (350MB/sec). That server is in production, otherwise I think for sure I would have a seen a full 3Gbps (375MB/sec) usage.


Click to expand...
 
Hi LittleMe,

I'm trying to figure out how you reached a point to point 4gbs network transfer. Lots of people in forums say it's not possible with normal Link Aggregation. Maybe did you use etherchannel?
 
NIC teaming and link aggregation doesn't work like you think it does.

It gives you four lanes to your server if your server and switch support it. It means you have 4Gbps theoretically divided across that four links. That does not mean you get 4Gbps over each link though or even a single link, that will never work; trust me I thought this too and researched and finally came to the conclusion that you need something else which escapes me right now.

But it would help you speed up the process of data transfer if you have multiple computers hitting that server.

I could be wrong but I'm almost certain that I'm very close to what link aggregation and nic teaming/bonding actually is.
 
Well, I'm finding lots of contraditory opinions on forums. Seems like the majority of people thinks that teaming is limited to a gigabit per machine, like you.

I'm researching right now and seems that there's also people that is being able to reach that 200-220MB/sec ehernet file transfer to a client machine with two gigabit NICs.

I've looked at "balance-alb" protocol(in linux), similar to , which makes believe to the server that the two client NICs are a single one, multiplexing the two signals or something like that.

I can't understad how is possible that there is so little information about something so useful.

Hope someone could clarify more on that, and LittleMe... to explain his secret :)
 
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