NEC Express5800 Fault Tolerant Virtual Server Quick Start Guide
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STEP 1: Install the Hardware
You must ensure that you have the necessary hardware to create your virtual machine solution and that you
have installed it correctly. Infrastructure solutions that use Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 run multiple
virtual machines on a single physical server. Because this type of solution runs multiple servers on a single
piece of hardware, it is important to make sure that you configure the hardware correctly.
An FT Server provides your virtual solution with hardware fault tolerance and performance. To use the fault
tolerance built into the NEC servers, you must configure the hardware components correctly. Specifically, to
provide redundancy for network connectivity, you must install multiple network adapters. In addition, to maintain
operation in the event of a power outage, you must configure the power inputs correctly.
Connecting to the Network
All of the virtual machines that run on the server rely on the same network connectivity for client connection to
the services and applications that the virtual machines provide. Because a failure in the network connectivity of
the server has an impact on a large amount of network functionality, you must include fault tolerance for
network connections.
To provide fault tolerance for network connections and to enhance performance, configure the network
adapters into teams. In a network adapter team, one adapter is the primary or active adapter and all other
adapters are secondary or backup adapters.
If the active adapter fails in a
fault tolerant
team, the backup adapter becomes active and seamlessly continues
operation. In a
performance
team, network traffic distributes between the adapters. In addition to increasing
performance, a performance team can also provide fault tolerance if an adapter fails.
You are going to create an Adapter Fault Tolerant (AFT) team. The Guide describes the configuration of AFT
teams in
STEP 3: Configure the Server Hardware.
For now, we are going to connect the network adapters to
the network and create an AFT team.
To connect the embedded Ethernet controllers to the network:
1. Provide
an
unshielded twisted pair (UTP)
cable with
RJ-45 connectors
for each of the four
Ethernet
adapters.
2. Install
the
Ethernet
adapters in
pairs
, one in the same numbered slot in each
module
. For example,
for the
first team
, install an adapter in slot one in each
module
.
3. Connect one end of each cable to a network port on the
server
and the other end to a
switch
.
The following sections explain the different types of network adapter teams.
Adapter Fault Tolerant Teams
An AFT team is a set of two or more network adapters that provide redundant connections to a single switch. In
an AFT team, a single adapter is active on the network until a failover occurs (usually caused by failure of the
adapter); at this point, a secondary adapter becomes active.
In an AFT team, both adapters connect to the same switch. Therefore, if the switch fails, both adapters become
unavailable, and network connectivity is lost.
Figure 3 shows an AFT configuration and the outcome of adapter and switch failure.
