17–QLogic Teaming Services
Executive Summary
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83840-546-00 D
SLB (Auto-Fallback Disable)
This type of team is identical to the Smart Load Balance and Failover type of
team, with the following exception—when the standby member is active, if a
primary member comes back on line, the team continues using the standby
member rather than switching back to the primary member. This type of team is
supported only for situations in which the network cable is disconnected and
reconnected to the network adapter. It is not supported for situations in which the
adapter is removed/installed through Device Manager or Hot-Plug PCI.
If any primary adapter assigned to a team is disabled, the team functions as a
Smart Load Balancing and Failover type of team in which auto-fallback occurs.
Software Components
Teaming is implemented through an NDIS intermediate driver in the Windows
Operating System environment. This software component works with the miniport
driver, the NDIS layer, and the protocol stack to enable the teaming architecture
(see
). The miniport driver controls the host LAN controller directly to
enable functions such as sends, receives, and interrupt processing. The
intermediate driver fits between the miniport driver and the protocol layer
multiplexing several miniport driver instances, and creating a virtual adapter that
looks like a single adapter to the NDIS layer. NDIS provides a set of library
functions to enable the communications between either miniport drivers or
intermediate drivers and the protocol stack. The protocol stack implements IP, IPX
and ARP. A protocol address such as an IP address is assigned to each miniport
device instance, but when an Intermediate driver is installed, the protocol address
is assigned to the virtual team adapter and not to the individual miniport devices
that make up the team.
The QLogic supplied teaming support is provided by three individual software
components that work together and are supported as a package. When one
component is upgraded, all the other components must be upgraded to the
supported versions.
describes the four software components and their
associated files for supported operating systems.
Table 17-3. QLogic Teaming Software Component
Software
Component
QLogic Name
Network Adapter/Operating
System
System
Architecture
Windows
File Name
Virtual Bus Driver
(VBD)
8400/3400 Series
32-bit
evbdx.sys
64-bit
evbda.sys
Configuration
User Inter-
face
QLogic Control
Suite (QCS)
Windows Server 2008
–
qcs.exe
Windows Server 2008 R2
–
qcs.exe
Windows Server 2012/2012 R2
–
qcs.exe
