Ethernet Products
Determine ramifications of Intel® Ethernet products and technologies
4809 Discussions

How to configure ANS Link Aggregation for increased bandwidth to a single machine address?

idata
Employee
1,358 Views

I would like to know how to configure Intel Advanced Network Services (ANS) to obtain increased bandwidth transfer to a single machine in a gigabit ethernet network. I've an Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual port server on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine on the server part, HP Procurve 1810 LACP switch and two Intel PRO/1000 CT on a Windows 7 Pro machine on the client side.

Looking at the Intel Teaming on ANS page http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-009747.htm http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-009747.htm it states clearly that all the teaming modes (like Adaptive Load Balancing) are intend for multiple destination addresses.

Technically I know it's possible to duplicate the bandwidth for a single address since the new Microsoft hardware independent NIC teaming drivers in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 can do it when configured in LACP mode for SMB multichannel. It is clearly shown in this Microsoft's article: http://server720.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/smb-30-multipath-over-nic-team-in.html http://server720.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/smb-30-multipath-over-nic-team-in.html

I doubt that Intel drivers cannot do what the Microsoft ones are able to do.

So, how can I configure ANS teaming to increase server to single machine address bandwidth?

Thanks.

0 Kudos
1 Reply
Mark_H_Intel
Employee
497 Views

Hi George,

As you pointed out, SMB multichannel is a feature of Windows Server 2012 that works with connections to clients running either Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8. Because support from the operating system is required to create multiple TCP/IP connections, you will still only have one connection with older versions of Windows. Therefore, one SMB connection will not make use of the additional potential bandwidth in your team.

Teaming ports will give you fault tolerance, but if your main concern is increasing the speed of a transfer between one client and one server, then you will probably see the best performance by not teaming the ports. Creating a team will add the overhead of having the ANS team interface. The overhead is worthwhile when you have multiple connections or when you need to add fault tolerance.

Mark H

For those of you who are wondering about SMB multichannel support in Windows Server 2012, check out http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/06/28/the-basics-of-smb-multichannel-a-feature-of-windows-server-2012-and-smb-3-0.aspx The basics of SMB Multichannel, a feature of Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0 - Jose Barreto&# 39;s Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs.

0 Kudos
Reply