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[Network Tutor]Complete Guide to Teaming with BroadCom Network Adaptors On IBM BladeCenter Part 3

[Network Tutor]Complete Guide to Teaming with BroadCom Network Adaptors On IBM BladeCenter Part 3

To Configure Using Expert Mode

Use Expert Mode to create a team, modify a team, add a VLAN, and configure LiveLink for a Smart Load Balance and Failover team. To switch to the Teaming Wizard from the Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 2 Tools menu, click Customize. Select the Default Teaming Mode tab and select Wizard Mode.
Creating a Team

NOTE: Enabling Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is not recommended for members of an SLB type of team.
1. From the Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 2 Tools menu, click Create a Team. The wizard Welcome screen appears.
2. To work without the wizard, click Expert Mode.
NOTE: If you want to always use Expert Mode to create a team, click Default to Expert Mode on next start.
3. Click Next.

Picture-1 Choose Team Wizard Expert Mode

4. Type a team name in the Enter a name you will use to identify this team box.
5. Click the type of team, and then click Next.

Picture-2 Choose Team Wizard Expert Mode
6. Assign any available adapter or adapters to the team by moving the adapter from the Available Adapters list to the Load Balance Members list. There must be at least one adapter in the Load Balance Members list.

7. Assign any other available adapter or adapters to the team by moving the adapter from the Available Adapters list to the Standby Member list.
NOTE: There must be at least one Broadcom network adapter assigned to the team.
The TCP Offload Engine (TOE), Large Send Offload (LSO), and Checksum Offload (CO) columns indicate if the TOE, LSO, and/or the CO properties are supported (Y) or not supported (N) for the adapter. The TOE, LSO, and CO properties are enabled for a team only when all of the members support and are configured for the feature. If this is the case, then the team offload capabilities appear on the bottom of the screen.
NOTE: Adding a network adapter to a team where its driver is disabled may negatively affect the offloading capabilities of the team. This may have an impact on the team's performance. Therefore, it is recommended that only driver-enabled network adapters be added as members to a team.

Picture-3 Assigning Adpator

8. Click Next to configure LiveLink for this team. See Configuring LiveLink for a Smart Load Balancing and Failover Team.
-or- Click Apply.

9. Click Yes when the message is displayed indicating that the network connection will be temporarily interrupted.
NOTES The team name cannot exceed 39 characters, cannot begin with spaces, and cannot contain any of the following characters: & \ / : * ? < > |

10. Team names must be unique. If you attempt to use a team name more than once, an error message is displayed indicating that the name already exists.

11. The maximum number of team members is 8.

12. When team configuration has been correctly performed, a virtual team adapter driver is created for each configured team.

13. If you disable a virtual team and later want to reenable it, you must first disable and reenable all team members before you reenable the virtual team.

14. When you create Generic Trunking and Link Aggregation teams, you cannot designate a standby member. Standby members work only with Smart Load Balancing and Failover and SLB (Auto-Fallback Disable) types of teams.

15. For an SLB (Auto-Fallback Disable) team, to restore traffic to the load balance members from the standby member, click the Fallback button on the Team Properties tab.

16. When configuring an SLB team, although connecting team members to a hub is supported for testing, it is recommended to connect team members to a switch.

17. Not all network adapters made by others are supported or fully certified for teaming.

18. Configure the team IP address.
a. From Control Panel, double-click Network Connections.
b. Right-click the name of the team to be configured, and then click Properties.
c. On the General tab, click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then click Properties.
d. Configure the IP address and any other necessary TCP/IP configuration for the team, and then click OK when finished.

Modifying a Team

After you have created a team, you can modify the team in the following ways:
-  Change the type of team
-  Change the members assigned to the team
-  Add a VLAN
-  Modify a VLAN (using Expert Mode)
-  Remove a team or a VLAN (using Expert Mode)

To modify a team

1. From the Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 2 Tools menu, click Configure a Team. The wizard Welcome screen appears. 2. Click Next to continue modifying a team using the wizard or click Expert Mode to work in Expert Mode.

3. Make the desired changes, and then click OK.

4. Click Apply.

5. Click Yes when the message is displayed indicating that the network connection will be temporarily interrupted.

Adding a VLAN

You also can add virtual LANs (VLANs) to a team. This enables you to add multiple virtual adapters that are on different subnets. The benefit of this is that your system can have one network adapter that can belong to multiple subnets. With a VLAN, you can couple the functionality of load balancing for the load balance members, and you can employ a failover adapter.
You can define up to 64 VLANs per team (63 VLANs that are tagged and 1 VLAN that is not tagged). VLANs can only be created when all teams members are Broadcom adapters. If you try to create a VLAN with a non-Broadcom adapter, an error message is displayed.

To configure a team with a VLAN

1. Click the name of the team you want to configure.
2. From the Team Properties tab, click Add VLAN.

Picture-4 Choose Team  Proerty

3. The Welcome screen appears.
4. Click Expert Mode.
5. Type the VLAN ID and VLAN name, and then click Preview to view the configuration of the team. If you are satisfied with the configuration, click OK. If you are not satisfied, either delete the team or reconfigure it.
-or-
Click Apply.

Picture-5 Add VLAN

NOTE: The Untagged VLAN box is exclusively used by the VLAN ID field. To use VLAN ID 0, simply click this box. If you type a VLAN name or ID and the name already exists, an error message is displayed.
6. When you are finished adding VLANs to this team, click OK. A new virtual adapter is created for each VLAN.

Picture-6 VLAN Added

7. Click Apply.
8. Click Yes when the message is displayed indicating that the network connection will be temporarily interrupted.

NOTE: To maintain optimum adapter performance, your system should have 64 MB of system memory for each of the eight VLANs created per adapter.
Viewing VLAN Properties and Statistics and Running VLAN Tests
To view VLAN properties and statistics and to run VLAN tests
1. Click the name of the VLAN adapter of interest.
2. Click the Vital Sign tab to view the properties of the VLAN adapter.
3. Click the BASP Statistics tab to view the statistics for the VLAN adapter.
4. Click the Network Test tab to run a network test on the VLAN adapter.
Deleting a VLAN
The procedure below applies when you are in Expert Mode. To delete a VLAN when you are not in Expert Mode, right-click the VLAN in BACS2 and select Remove VLAN.
To delete a VLAN
1. From the Tools menu, click Configure a Team.
2. If there is more than one team, click the name of the team that has the VLAN you want to delete, and then click OK.
3. Click Remove VLAN.
4. Click Apply.
5. Click Yes when the message is displayed indicating that the network connection will be temporarily interrupted.

NOTE: If you delete a team, any VLANs configured for that team are also deleted.
Configuring LiveLink for a Smart Load Balancing and Failover Team
Read the following notes before you attempt to configure LiveLink.

NOTES:
? Before you begin configuring LiveLink?, review the description of LiveLink. Also verify that each probe target you plan to specify is available and working. If the IP address of the probe target changes for any reason, LiveLink must be reconfigured. If the MAC address of the probe target changes for any reason, you must restart the team (see "Troubleshooting").
? A probe target must be on the same subnet as the team, have a valid (not a broadcast, multicast, or unicast), statically-assigned IP address, and be highly available (always on).
? To ensure network connectivity to the probe target, ping the probe target from the team.
? You can specify up to four probe targets.
? The IP address assigned to either a probe target or team member cannot have a zero as the first or last octet.
To configure LiveLink
1. Right-click the name of the Smart Load Balance and Failover (SLB) team, and then click Configure LiveLink. The Welcome screen appears.
2. Click Expert Mode. The LiveLink Configuration screen appears.
3. It is recommended to accept the default values for Probe interval (the number of seconds between each retransmission of a link packet to the probe target) and Probe maximum retries (the number of consecutively missed responses from a probe target before a failover is triggered). To specify different values, click the desired probe interval in the Probe interval (seconds) list and click the desired maximum number of probe retries in the Probe maximum retries list.
4. Set the Probe VLAN ID to allow for connectivity with probe targets residing on a tagged VLAN. The number set must match the VLAN ID of the probe targets as well as the port(s) on the switch to which the team is connected.

NOTE: Each LiveLink enabled team can only communicate with Probe Targets on a single VLAN. Also, VLAN ID?0 is equivalent to an untagged network.
5. Click the probe target at the top of the list, click Edit Target IP Address, type the target IP address for one or all probe targets in the IP Address box, and then click OK.

NOTE: Only the first probe target is required. You can specify up to 3 additional probe targets to serve as backups by assigning IP addresses to the other probe targets.
6. Click one of the listed team members, click Edit Member IP Address, type the member IP address in the IP Address box, and then click OK.

NOTE: All of the member IP addresses must be in the same subnet as the subnet for the probe targets.
7. Repeat step 5 for each of the other listed team members.
8. Click Apply.

To configure LiveLink in VLAN-tagged environments

Picture-7 Enable LiveLink
Caution! For the teams with VLANs (on which LiveLink is enabled): to be able to communicate with the probe target, both the probe target and the team must be on an untagged VLAN (VLAN ID 0). Otherwise, the team loses connectivity.
1. Ensure that the team has an untagged VLAN (VLAN ID 0).
2. Ensure there is network connectivity between the team and the probe target on the untagged VLAN.
3. Right-click the name of the SLB team with VLAN(s).
4. Click the Enable LiveLink box.
5. Click the desired probe interval (the number of seconds between each retransmission of the link packet to the probe target) in the Probe interval (seconds) list.
6. Click the desired maximum number of probe retries in the Probe maximum retries list.
7. Set the Probe VLAN ID to allow for connectivity with probe targets residing on a tagged VLAN. The number set must match the VLAN ID of the probe targets as well as the port(s) on the switch to which the team is connected.

NOTE: Each LiveLink enabled team can only communicate with Probe Targets on a single VLAN. Also, VLAN ID 0 is equivalent to an untagged network.
8. Click the probe target at the top of the list, click Edit Target IP Address, type the target IP address in the IP Address box, and then click OK.
NOTE: It is not necessary to specify more than one probe target. If you do want to specify more than one, for each additional probe target (up to a total of 4), click the next probe target in the list, type the target IP address in the IP Address box, and then click OK.
9. Click one of the listed team members, click Edit Member IP Address, type the member IP address in the IP Address box, and then click OK.
NOTE: All of the member IP addresses must be in the same subnet as the subnet for the probe targets.
10. Repeat step 8 for each of the other listed team members.
11. Click Apply.

Viewing the Team Properties and Statistics
To view the team properties and statistics
1. Click the name of the newly created team.
2. Click the Statistics tab to view the team statistics.
Saving and Restoring a Configuration
To save a configuration
1. From the File menu, click Team Save As.
2. Type the path and file name of the new configuration file, and then click Save (a .bcg extension is added).
The configuration file is a text file that can be viewed by any text editor. The file contains information about both the adapter and the team configuration.
To restore a configuration
1. From the File menu, click Team Restore.
2. Click the name of the file to be restored, and then click Open.

NOTE: If necessary, go to the folder where the file is located.
3. Click Apply.
4. Click Yes when the message is displayed indicating that the network connection will be temporarily interrupted.
5. If a configuration is already loaded, a message is displayed that asks if you want to save your current configuration. Click Yes to save the current configuration. Otherwise, the configuration data that is currently loaded is lost.