HP Rx2620-2 Windows Integrity Network Adapter Teaming White Paper - Page 49
Switch A and Switch B is only a 100 Mbps link instead of 1000 Mbps. As a result, any device
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Figure 4-7 Upstream link failures cause server isolation HP NIC TEAMING IP= 1.1.1.1 NIC 1 Primary 50 USERS ACCESS TO SERVER C on so le Switch A C on so le Core Switch 250 USERS NO ACCESS TO SERVER External Network NO ACCESS TO SERVER NIC 2 Non-Primary Server Switch B C on so le 50 USERS NO ACCESS TO SERVER Router NO ACCESS TO SERVER In this case, the Fast Path mechanism, designed and developed by HP Engineering is an alternative solution. The Fast Path mechanism allows the teaming driver to passively monitor network connectivity on a per-teamed port basis with the Core Switch (designated as the Spanning Tree root switch). Teamed ports that receive Spanning Tree BPDU frames from a root switch with the highest Spanning Tree bridge priority are considered "eligible for use by the team. Any teamed port that receives a BPDU from a different root switch with a lower Spanning Tree bridge priority is considered "ineligible for use by the team" since the teamed port has been segregated from the main network segment. Therefore, Fast Path becomes another validation mechanism in addition to link loss, transmit path validation, receive path validation, and Active Path. There are also situations when upstream link failures can cause inefficient use of a server's teamed ports. For the first example, refer to Figure 4-8. In this example, Switch A has lost direct link with the Core Switch (in other words, Spanning Tree root switch). Spanning Tree eventually restores connectivity by unblocking the link between Switch A and Switch B. However, the link between Switch A and Switch B is only a 100 Mbps link instead of 1000 Mbps. As a result, any device connected to Switch A now only has access to 100 Mb worth of bandwidth to the core network. If the server's teamed port (in other words, NIC 1) connected to switch A is used as the team's Primary port, the maximum available receive bandwidth for the server is 100 Mb. However, if the same server used the teamed port (in other words, NIC 2) connected to Switch B as the team's Primary port, the maximum available receive bandwidth would be increased to 1000 Mb. Redundancy mechanisms that only test connectivity (for example, heartbeats, Active Path) will not detect this problem since connectivity with the core network still exists. A more granular mechanism needs to be implemented that can detect connectivity problems (bad versus good), and detect slower versus faster paths (good versus best). Types of HP Integrity Network Adapter Teams 49