3CR990 NIC Features
19
failed NIC. The failover behavior of secondary NICs
depends on how you set load balancing:
■
In a
transmit
load balancing arrangement, the primary
NIC is the only one that receives packets. If the primary
NIC fails, a secondary NIC assumes the configuration
profile, network traffic, and active status of the failed
primary NIC.
■
In a
bidirectional
load balancing arrangement, all NICs
receive packets. If any NIC fails, receive load balancing is
disabled, and the other NICs continue transmit-only
load balancing activity. Receive load balancing is
restored when new connections are established with
clients.
If any NIC in a bidirectional arrangement fails, receive load
balancing is disabled, and the other NICs continue
transmit-only load balancing activity. If the primary NIC
fails, a secondary NIC takes over packet reception for
the group.
Bidirectional load balancing is restored after a failure when
applications create new connections and new clients log in.
Figure 3
Bidirectional Load Balancing Failover
VLANs
A VLAN is a group of location-independent and
topology-independent devices that communicate as if they
were on the same physical LAN. Network devices on
different LAN segments and of different media types can
®
®
®
Server
Bidirectional
load balancing
Primary failure
Secondary failure
Clients
Primary Secondaries
Primary Secondaries
Primary Secondaries
Switch
