Dell Broadcom NetXtreme Family of Adapters Broadcom NetXtreme II Network Adapt - Page 94

Broadcom Teaming Services: Broadcom NetXtreme II Network Adapter User Guide information for that TCP connection. BASP can simultaneously use TCP offload in conjunction with the SLB modes of teaming. Other teaming modes (Generic Trunking or Link Aggregation) can still be used on TOE capable devices, but if those other modes are enabled the TOE feature is disabled. Since the TOE offloaded state is stored in only one member of a team, it might not be intuitive as to how BASP can support failover on TOE teams. When a TOE connection has been offloaded to a given adapter, and if that network interface fails in some way (that is, it loses its network link due to a cable disconnection), then BASP will detect the error and force an upload of the offloaded TCP state for each previously offloaded TCP connection on that adapter to the host. Once all of the previously offloaded state has been uploaded, BASP will rebalance the recently uploaded TCP connections and offload those connections evenly to the remaining members of the team. Basically, if there is a failure on a TOE-enabled adapter, any TCP connections that had been offloaded to that adapter are migrated to the remaining nonfailed members in the team. For Broadcom NetXtreme II adapters, there are no specific setup requirements in order for TCP Offload Engine (TOE) to work with BASP. Once the individual adapters are configured to enable TOE, they can be added to a team and the offload is transparent to BASP. For information on configuring TOE, see Viewing and Configuring Resource Reservations. Limitations of Teaming with Offloading TOE is enabled for a team only when all of the members support and are configured for TOE. TOE is only supported on SLB-type teams. Each virtual BASP device advertises 1024 offload connections. If the number of virtual BASP devices in a team exceeds the number of active physical members, the maximum offload connections for each virtual device may be lower. Software Components Teaming is implemented via an NDIS intermediate driver in the Windows Operating System environment. This software component works with the miniport driver, the NDIS layer, and the protocol stack to enable the teaming architecture (see Figure 2). The miniport driver controls the host LAN controller directly to enable functions such as sends, receives, and interrupt processing. The intermediate driver fits between the miniport driver and the protocol layer multiplexing several miniport driver instances, and creating a virtual adapter that looks like a single adapter to the NDIS layer. NDIS provides a set of library functions to enable the communications between either miniport drivers or intermediate drivers and the protocol stack. The protocol stack implements IP, IPX and ARP. A protocol address such as an IP address is assigned to each miniport device instance, but when an Intermediate driver is installed, the protocol address is assigned to the virtual team adapter and not to the individual miniport devices that make up the team. The Broadcom supplied teaming support is provided by three individual software components that work together and are supported as a package. When one component is upgraded, all the other components must be upgraded to the supported versions. Table 3 describes the four software components and their associated files for supported operating systems. Table 3: Broadcom Teaming Software Component Software Component Miniport Driver Intermediate Driver Configuration User Interface Broadcom Name Network System Adapter/Operating System Architecture BCM5708, BCM5709 32-bit BCM5708, BCM5709 64-bit Virtual Bus Driver (VBD) BCM57710, BCM57711, BCM57712 32-bit BCM57710, BCM57711, BCM57712 64-bit Windows Server 2008 (NDIS 6.0) 32-bit Broadcom Base Driver Windows Server 2008 (NDIS 6.0) 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 (NDIS 6.0) 64-bit Broadcom Advanced Server Program (BASP) Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 R2 32-bit, 64-bit 64-bit Broadcom Advanced Control Suite (BACS) - - Windows File Name bxvbdx.sys bxvbda.sys evbdx.sys evbda.sys bxnd60x.sys bxnd60a.sys bxnd60a.sys basp.sys basp.sys bacs.exe Hardware Requirements file:///T|/htdocs/NETWORK/BroadCom/71921/NetXtremeII/en/teamsvcs.htm[9/26/2012 3:29:14 PM]