How-To Configure NIC Teaming on Windows for HP Proliant Server

NIC Teaming means you are grouping two or more physical NIC (network interface controller card) and it will act as a single NICs. You may call it as a Virtual NICs. The minimum number of NICs which can be grouped (Teamed) is Two and the maximum number of NICs which you can group is Eight.

HP Servers are equipped with Redundant Power Supply, Fan, Hard drive (RAID) etc. As we have redundant hardware components installed on same server, the server will be available to its users even if one of the above said components fails. In the similar manner, by doing NIC Teaming (Network Teaming), we can achieve Network Fault tolerance and Load balancing on your HP Proliant Server.

HP Proliant Network Adapter Teaming (NIC Teaming) allows Server administrator to configure Network Adapter, Port, Network cable and switch level redundancy and fault tolerance. Server NIC Teaming will also allows Receive Load balancing and Transmit Load balancing. Once you configure NIC teaming on a server, the server connectivity will not be affected when Network adapter fails, Network Cable disconnects or Switch failure happens.

To create NIC Teaming in Windows 2008/2003 Operating System, we need to use the HP Network Configuration Utility. This utility is available for download at Driver & Download page of your HP Server (HP.com). Please install the latest version of Network card drivers before you install the HP Network Configuration Utility. In Linux, Teaming (NIC Bonding) function is already available and there is no HP tools which you need to use to configure it. This article will focus only on Windows based NIC teaming.

HP Network Configuration Utility (HP NCU) is a very easy-to-use tool available for Windows Operating System. HP NCU allows you to configure different types of Network Team, here are the few: 

1. Network Fault Tolerance Only (NFT)
2. Network Fault Tolerance Only with Preference Order
3. Transmit Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance (TLB)
4. Transmit Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance and Preference Order
5. Switch-assisted Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance (SLB)
6. 802.3ad Dynamic with Fault Tolerance

Network Fault Tolerance Only (NFT)

In NFT team, you can group two to eight NIC ports and it will act as one virtual network adapter. In NFT, only one NIC port will transmit and receive data and its called as primary NIC. Remaining adapters are non-primary and will not participate in receive and transmit of data. So if you group 8 NICs and create a NFT Team, then only 1 NIC will transmit and receive data, remaining 7 NICs will be in standby mode. If the primary NIC fails, then next available NIC will be treated as Primary, and will continue the transmit and receive of data. NFT supports switch level redundancy by allowing the teamed ports to be connected to more than one switch in the same LAN.

Network Fault Tolerance Only with Preference Order:

This mode is identical to NFT, however here you can select which NIC is Primary NIC. You can configure NIC Priority in HP Network Configuration Utility. This team type allows System Administrator to prioritize the order in which teamed ports should failover if any Network failure happens. This team supports switch level redundancy.

Transmit Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance (TLB):

TLB supports load balancing (transmit only). The primary NIC is responsible for receiving all traffic destined for the server, however remaining adapters will participate in transmission of data. Please note that Primary NIC will do both transmit and receive while rest of the NIC will perform only transmission of data. In simpler words, when TLB is configured, all NICs will transmit the data but only the primary NIC will do both transmit and receive operation. So if you group 8 NICs and create a TLB Team, then only 1 NIC will transmit and receive data, remaining 7 NICs will perform transmission of data. TLB supports switch level redundancy.

Transmit Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance and Preference Order:

This model is identical to TLB, however you can select which one is the Primary NIC. This option will help System Administrator to design network in such a way that one of the teamed NIC port is more preferred than other NIC port in the same team. This model also supports switch level redundancy.

Switch-assisted Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance (SLB):

SLB allows full transmit and receive load balancing. In this team, all the NICs will transmit and receive data hence you have both transmit and receive load balancing. So if you group 8 NICs and create a SLB Team, all the 8 NICs will transmit and receive data. However, SLB does not support Switch level redundancy as we have to connect all the teamed NIC ports to the same switch. Please note that SLB is not supported on all switches as it requires Ether Channel, MultiLink Trunking etc.

802.3ad Dynamic with Fault Tolerance

This team is identical to SLB except that the switch must support IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP). The main advantage of 802.3ad is that you do not have to manually configure your switch. 802.3ad does not support Switch level redundancy but allows full transmit and receive load balancing.

How to team NICs on HP Proliant Server:

To configure NIC teaming on your Windows based HP Proliant Server, you need to download HP Network Configuration Utility (HP NCU). This utility is available for download at HP.com. Once you download and install NCU, please open it. To know how to open NCU on your HP Server, please check my guide provided below.

Guide: Different ways to open HP NCU on your server

If you are using Windows 2012 Server Operating System on your HP Server, then you could not use HP Network Configuration Utility. We need to use the inbuilt network team software of Windows here. Please check the below provided article about Windows 2012 Network team to learn more.

Guide: NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012

Let us continue with our Windows 2008/2003 based HP NCU here. Once you open NCU, you will find all the installed network cards are listed in it. As you can find from below provided screenshot, we have 4 NICs installed. Here, we will team first two NICs in NFT mode.

Let’s start

1. The HP Network Configuration Utility Properties window will look like the one provided below.

2. Select 2 NICs by clicking on it and then click Team button.

3. HP Network Team #1 will be created as shown below.
4. Select HP Network Team #1 and click on Properties button to change team properties

5. The Team Properties Window will open now.

6. Here you can select the type of NIC team you want to implement (See below screenshot).

7. Here, I will select NFT from the Team Type Selection drop down list.
8. Click OK once you selected the desired Team type.

9. Now you will be at below provided screen now. Click OK to close HP NCU.

10. You will receive confirmation window prompting you to save changes, Click Yes.

11. HP NCU will configure NIC teaming now, the screen may look like the one provided below.

12. This may take some time, once Teaming is done, below provided window will be shown.

13. Open HP NCU, you could find that HP Network Team is in Green color. Congrats

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Windows 7 Link aggregation / NICs Teaming

Intel NIC’s 802.3ad Link Aggregation in Windows 7? – [H]ard|Forum

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1762818

If anyone else is trying to do this, I figured it out. Follow these directions for Intel NIC’s. The feature is not included in Windows 7, so the NIC drivers have to support it. You have to be logged…

Network Connectivity — How do I use Teaming with Advanced Networking Services (ANS)?

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-009747.htm

Adapter teaming with Intel® Advanced Network Services (ANS) uses an intermediate driver to group multiple physical ports. Teaming can be used to add fault tolerance, load balancing, and link…

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Working with NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012

Of the many networking features introduced in Hyper-V 3.0 on Windows Server 2012, several were added to enhance the overall capability for networking virtual machines (VMs). One of the features introduced in Hyper-V 3.0 is a collection of components for configuring NIC teaming on virtual machines and the Windows operating system.

Originally designed for Windows Server 2012, NIC Teaming can also be used to configure teamed adapters for Hyper-V virtual machines. Since our primary focus in this article is to provide an overview of NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012 and later versions, we will not cover in detail the steps needed to configure NIC Teaming for operating systems and virtual machines.

In earlier versions of Hyper-V (version 1.0 and version 2.0), the Windows operating system did not provide any utility to configure NIC Teaming for physical network adapters, and it was not possible to configure NIC teaming for virtual machines. A Windows administrator could configure NIC teaming on Windows by using third-party utilities but with the following disadvantages:

• Support was provided by the vendor and not by Microsoft.
• You could only configure NIC Teaming between physical network adapters of the same manufacturer.
• There are also separate management UIs for managing each third-party network teaming if you have configured more than one teaming.
• Most of the third-party teaming solutions do not have options for configuring teaming options remotely.

Starting with Hyper-V version 3.0 on Windows Server 2012, you can easily configure NIC Teaming for Virtual Machines.

This article expounds on the following topics:

• NIC Teaming Requirements for Virtual Machines
• NIC Teaming Facts and Considerations
• How NIC Teaming works

NIC Teaming Requirements for Virtual Machines

Before you can configure NIC Teaming for virtual machines, ensure the following requirements are in place:

• Make sure you are running minimum Windows Server 2012 version as the guest operating system in Virtual Machine.
• Available physical network adapters that will participate in the NIC Teaming.
• Identify the VLAN number if the NIC team will need to be configured with a VLAN number.

NIC Teaming Facts and Considerations

It is necessary to follow several guidelines while configuring NIC Teaming, and there are also some facts you should keep in mind that are highlighted in bullet points below:

• Microsoft implements a protocol called "Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor" (explained shortly) that helps in building the NIC Teaming without the use of any third-party utilities.
• Microsoft's teaming protocol can be used to team network adapters of different vendors.
• It is recommended to always use the same physical network adapter with the same configuration, including configuration speed, drivers, and other network functionality, when setting up NIC Teaming between two physical network adapters.
• NIC teaming is a feature of Windows Server, so it can be used for any network traffic, including virtual machine networking traffic.
• NIC teaming is set up at the hardware level (physical NIC).
• By default, a Windows Server can team up to 32 physical network adapters.
• Only two physical network adapters in teaming can be assigned to a virtual machine. In other words, a network teamed adapter cannot be attached to a virtual machine if it contains more than two physical network adapters.
• NIC Teaming can only be configured if there are two or more 1 GB or two or more 10 GB physical network adapters.
• Teamed network adapters will appear in the "External Network" configuration page of Virtual Machine settings.
• NIC Teaming can also be referred to as NIC bonding, load balancing and failover or LBFO.

How Does NIC Teaming Work?

Microsoft developers have designed a new protocol for NIC Teaming specifically. The new protocol, known as Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor, assists in routing packets from physical network adapters to NIC teaming adapters and vice versa. This protocol is responsible for diverting the traffic from a teamed adapter to the physical NIC. The protocol is installed by default as part of the physical network adapter initialization for the first time.

The Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor protocol is checked in the teamed network adapter and unchecked in the physical network adapters that are part of the NIC Teaming. For example, if there are two physical network adapters in a team, the Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor protocol will be disabled for these two physical network adapters and checked in the teamed adapter as shown in the below screenshot:

As shown in the above screenshot, the Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor protocol is unchecked in the properties section of the Physical Network Adapter named "PNIC5," and the Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor protocol is checked in the property of "Hyper-VTeaming" teamed network adapter. "Hyper-VTeaming" is a teamed network adapter.

Any network traffic generated from the teamed adapter will be received by one of the physical NICs participating in the Teaming. The teamed adapter talks to the Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplexor protocol bound in the physical NIC.

If this protocol is unchecked in one of the physical network adapters, then the Teamed adapter will not be able to communicate with the physical network adapters participating in the Teaming. Third-party teaming utilities might have a different protocol designed for this, but the one offered by Microsoft can be used with any vendor network card — so this protocol is vendor- and network adapter-independent.

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LMMC header on DLink router file, decoding the zlib zpipe Plaintext password

Tested on a DLink DSL-G604T

Downloading the config file dumps a config.bin file. The first line of the file has a LMMC which indicates a zlib header

Convert the file to a .Z file
dd if=config.bin of=test.config.bin.z bs=20 skip=1

download the zlib source and extract it. http://zlib.net/zlib-1.2.7.tar.gz
go to the examples folder
compile zpipe.c using the command
gcc -o zipe zpipe.c -lz
now you will have something called zpipe

copy the zpipe command where the config files are and execute the command
./zpipe -d < test.config.bin.z > config.txt

now open config.txt and view it plaintext!

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LMCC and Router Configs

I contacted ACA and TT (through their website forms) about the Internet Filtering plan that the Australian Government is pushing through.

I’ve been really vocal about this previously, but now I think it’s time to start committing myself into writing and helping others get their letters written and sent to the people both responsible and the people letting this happen.

Click on the article to see the full text I submitted.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: censorship, filtering, Internet Filtering
Posted in Internet Filtering | No Comments »
LMCC and Router Configs
October 22nd, 2008

Source code attached, see end of article.

I had to pull the password for the internet connection out of a router at work recently and stumbled upon a problem that didn’t seem to have much of a solution, the router allows you to save a binary copy of the config, but it didn’t appear to be a known format.

kosh@aerith ~ $ file config.bin
config.bin: data

So after a little digging I found a Zlib header in the file and found a resource on the internet that had a windows only decoder (which failed for me :( ) so I proceeded to figure it out for myself.

kosh@aerith ~ $ hexdump -C config.bin | head -n 2
00000000 4c 4d 4d 43 00 03 00 00 c9 1a 00 00 8d 0e 8d cb |LMMC............|
00000010 e0 a2 00 00 78 9c ed 3d 6b 73 db 38 92 9f ef 7e |....x..=ks.8...~|

You can see the Zlib style magic at the 20-byte mark (0x14, “78 9c”). I tested my theory by grabbing zpipe.c from the zlib website and using dd to decode it.

kosh@aerith ~ $ dd if=config.bin of=test.bin.Z bs=20 skip=1
342+1 records in
342+1 records out
6857 bytes (6.9 kB) copied, 0.0165227 s, 415 kB/s
kosh@aerith ~ $ ./zpipe -d < test.bin.Z
....

But considering I was 5 minutes from a simple working setup, I hacked zpipe.c down and made zlmcc.c from it. I've made zlmcc.c available for anyone else that wants to deflate these files quickly.

Usual guarantee applies, if it blows up the world, not my fault. I only tested it on my system and with my single config file, using the above steps you should be able to figure it out if they change the format by a little (offset, etc)

via Kosh's

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