How to Configure NIC Teaming for

VMware® ESX® Server Software on

Dell™ PowerEdge™ Servers

February, 2004

February, 2004 1 Dell Inc.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents 2

1. Introduction 3

2. How to Create NIC Teaming 3

3. Testing 4

4. How to Remove a Physical NIC from a Team 4

© 2003, 2004 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice.

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Portions of this document Copyrighted VMware, Inc. 2003.

February, 2004 2 Dell Inc.

1. INTRODUCTION

NIC teaming is the process of grouping together several physical NICs into one single logical
NIC, which can be used by virtual machines. The process of grouping NICs is called binding.
Binding has two purposes:

• High Availability: By binding more than one physical NIC to a logical NIC, high
availability is maximized. Even if one NIC fails, the network connection does not cease
and continues to operate on other NICs. Such a failure is transparent to the virtual
machine, which may only notice degradation in performance.

• Load Balancing: VM kernel tries to multiplex the connection with all the NICs in the
team.

2. HOW TO CREATE NIC TEAMING

1. Power down all the virtual machines which utilize the NICs that are to be teamed. Also,
shut down all the Virtual Machines to which the created logical NIC will be assigned.
2. Login to the ESX Server using the Management Interface.
3. Select the Options tab.
4. Select Network Connections.
5. For each NIC which is part of a particular team, select a unique bind number from the
Network drop down list as shown below. For example, to create a binding between nic0
and nic1, select a unique bind number, such as Bind0 Networks, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Binding NICs

February, 2004 3 Dell Inc.

 6. You will be prompted to enter a label for the binding. Enter a meaningful label for the
binding. For example, you could append the subnet address to the label, for ease of
identification.
7. Go back to the main screen of the Management Interface.
8. Click on the Virtual Machine to which the created NIC team will be attached.
9. Click on Network Connections.
10. Click on Edit and add the newly created NIC team to the Virtual Machine as shown in
Figure 2.

Figure 2: Adding a NIC team to a Virtual Machine

3. TESTING

A very simple test can be performed to demonstrate the reliability offered by NIC teaming. Bring
up the virtual machine and use the ping utility to test connectivity of the IP address of the virtual
machine. While the ping program is running, remove the Ethernet cable from any one of the NICs
in the team. The ping should still be successful in finding the IP address.

NOTE: “ping” is a command line utility commonly available in most operating systems that can diagnose
connectivity between two IP addresses. It is usually invoked by typing the command “ping” followed by the
IP address to be tested.

4. HOW TO REMOVE A PHYSICAL NIC FROM A TEAM

1. Power down all the virtual machines using the NIC team.
2. Login to the ESX Server using the Management Interface.
3. Select the Options tab.
4. Select Network Connections.
5. For the NIC to be removed from the team, select Adapter Network <number> from the
Network drop down list.

February, 2004 4 Dell Inc.