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Smart Load Balancing™ and Failover
Smart Load Balancing™ and Failover is the Broadcom implementation of load balancing based on IP
flow. This feature supports balancing IP traffic across multiple adapters (team members) in a
bidirectional manner. In this type of team, all adapters in the team have separate MAC addresses.
This type of team provides automatic fault detection and dynamic failover to other team member or
to a hot standby member. This is done independently of Layer 3 protocol (IP, IPX, NetBEUI); it
works with existing Layer 2 and 3 switches. No switch configuration (such as trunk, link
aggregation) is necessary for this type of team to work.
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If you do not enable LiveLink™ when configuring SLB teams, disabling Spanning Tree
Protocol (STP) at the switch or port is recommended. This minimizes the downtime due to
spanning tree loop determination when failing over. LiveLink mitigates such issues.
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IPX balances only on the transmitting side of the team; other protocols are limited to the
primary adapter.
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If a team member is linked at 1000 Mbit/s and another team member is linked at 100 Mbit/s,
most of the traffic is handled by the 1000 Mbit/s team member.
Link Aggregation (802.3ad)
This mode supports link aggregation and conforms to the IEEE 802.3ad (LACP) specification.
Configuration software allows you to dynamically configure which adapters you want to participate
in a given team. If the link partner is not correctly configured for 802.3ad link configuration, errors
are detected and noted. With this mode, all adapters in the team are configured to receive packets for
the same MAC address. The outbound load-balancing scheme is determined by our BASP driver. The
team link partner determines the load-balancing scheme for inbound packets. In this mode, at least
one of the link partners must be in active mode.
Generic Trunking (FEC/GEC)/802.3ad-Draft Static
The Generic Trunking (FEC/GEC)/802.3ad-Draft Static type of team is very similar to the Link
Aggregation (802.3ad) type of team, in that all adapters in the team are configured to receive packets
for the same MAC address. However, the Generic Trunking (FEC/GEC)/802.3ad-Draft Static) type
of team, does not provide LACP or marker protocol support. This type of team supports a variety of
environments in which the adapter link partners are statically configured to support a proprietary
trunking mechanism. For instance, this type of team could be used to support Lucent's OpenTrunk or
Cisco's Fast EtherChannel (FEC). Basically, this type of team is a light version of the Link
Aggregation (802.3ad) type of team. This approach is much simpler, in that there is not a formalized
link aggregation control protocol (LACP). As with the other types of teams, the creation of teams and
the allocation of physical adapters to various teams is done statically through user configuration
software.
The Generic Trunking (FEC/GEC/802.3ad-Draft Static) type of team supports load balancing and
failover for both outbound and inbound traffic.
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Link aggregation (802.3ad) is not supported in the Blade Server.
