Introduction

HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software lets your ProLiant systems running Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 Hyper-V take advantage of HP network controller teaming technology.

NIC teaming means grouping several physical NICs into a single logical NIC. NIC teaming enhances fault tolerance by increasing availability of a server’s network connection. Multiple network paths let you balance network traffic for better performance.

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is a scalable, hypervisor-based virtualization platform for provisioning and managing virtual server workloads. NIC teaming and virtualized platforms can work together to increase efficiency of large-scale enterprise systems.

This HOWTO paper defines a step-by-step procedure for installing the software and implementing NIC teaming.

Software requirements

Using NIC teaming on an HP ProLiant server in a Hyper-V environment requires the following software:

•HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software: HP Network Configuration Utility (NCU) version 10.10 or greater. It is in HP ProLiant Support Pack (PSP) 8.60 on the HP SmartStart CD. It is also available from http://www.hp.com.

•Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

Before installing the teaming software, verify HP ProLiant server support: Refer to the HP paper “Implementing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V on HP ProLiant Servers.”

Order of installation

You must install and enable the software in the following order:

1.Install and enable the latest version of Hyper-V from Microsoft.

Review and install the appropriate Windows updates and hot fixes identified at “Hyper-V Update List for Windows Server 2008” and “Hyper-V Update List for Windows Server 2008 R2.”

Using Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core or Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 R2 requires you to install the hot fix “Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core.”

2.Install and enable the HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software.