NIC Teaming (Network Teaming) means you are grouping two or more physical NICs and it will act as a single NIC. You may call it as a Virtual NIC. Minimum number of NICs which can be grouped (Teamed) is Two and the maximum number of NICs which you can group is Eight.
HP Servers are equipped with Redundant Power Supply, Fan, Hard drive (RAID) etc. As we have redundant hardware components installed on same server, the server will be available to its users even if one of the above said components fails. In the similar manner, by doing NIC Teaming (Network Teaming), we can achieve Network Fault tolerance and Load balancing on your HP Proliant Server.
HP Proliant Network Adapter Teaming (NIC Teaming) allows Server administrator to configure Network Adapter, Port, Network cable and switch level redundancy and fault tolerance. Server NIC Teaming will also allows Receive Load balancing and Transmit Load balancing. Once you configure NIC teaming on a server, the server connectivity will not be affected when Network adapter fails, Network Cable disconnects or Switch failure happens.
To create NIC Teaming in Windows 2008/2003 Operating System, we need to use the HP Network Configuration Utility. This utility is available for download at Driver & Download page of your HP Server (HP.com). Please install the latest version of Network card drivers before you install the HP Network Configuration Utility. In Linux, Teaming (NIC Bonding) function is already available and there is no HP tools which you need to use to configure it. This article will focus only on Windows based NIC teaming.
HP Network Configuration Utility (HP NCU) is a very easy-to-use tool available for Windows Operating System. HP NCU allows you to configure different types of Network Team, here are the few: 
1. Network Fault Tolerance Only (NFT)
2. Network Fault Tolerance Only with Preference Order
3. Transmit Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance (TLB)
4. Transmit Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance and Preference Order
5. Switch-assisted Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance (SLB)
6. 802.3ad Dynamic with Fault Tolerance
Network Fault Tolerance Only (NFT):
In NFT team, you can group two to eight NIC ports and it will act as one virtual network adapter. In NFT, only one NIC port will transmit and receive data and its called as primary NIC. Remaining adapters are non-primary and will not participate in receive and transmit of data. So if you group 8 NICs and create a NFT Team, then only 1 NIC will transmit and receive data, remaining 7 NICs will be in standby mode. If the primary NIC fails, then next available NIC will be treated as Primary, and will continue the transmit and receive of data. NFT supports switch level redundancy by allowing the teamed ports to be connected to more than one switch in the same LAN
Network Fault Tolerance Only with Preference Order:
This mode is identical to NFT, however here you can select which NIC is Primary NIC. You can configure NIC Priority in HP Network Configuration Utility. This team type allows System Administrator to prioritize the order in which teamed ports should failover if any Network failure happens. This team supports switch level redundancy.
Transmit Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance (TLB):
TLB supports load balancing (transmit only). The primary NIC is responsible for receiving all traffic destined for the server, however remaining adapters will participate in transmission of data. Please note that Primary NIC will do both transmit and receive while rest of the NIC will perform only transmission of data. In simpler words, when TLB is configured, all NICs will transmit the data but only the primary NIC will do both transmit and receive operation. So if you group 8 NICs and create a TLB Team, then only 1 NIC will transmit and receive data, remaining 7 NICs will perform transmission of data. TLB supports switch level redundancy.
Transmit Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance and Preference Order:
This model is identical to TLB, however you can select which one is the Primary NIC. This option will help System Administrator to design network in such a way that one of the teamed NIC port is more preferred than other NIC port in the same team. This model also supports switch level redundancy.
Switch-assisted Load Balancing with Fault Tolerance (SLB):
SLB allows full transmit and receive load balancing. In this team, all the NICs will transmit and receive data hence you have both transmit and receive load balancing. So if you group 8 NICs and create a SLB Team, all the 8 NICs will transmit and receive data. However, SLB does not support Switch level redundancy as we have to connect all the teamed NIC ports to the same switch. Please note that SLB is not supported on all switches as it requires Ether Channel, MultiLink Trunking etc.
802.3ad Dynamic with Fault Tolerance
This team is identical to SLB except that the switch must support IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP). The main advantage of 802.3ad is that you do not have to manually configure your switch. 802.3ad does not support Switch level redundancy but allows full transmit and receive load balancing.
How to team NICs on HP Proliant Server:
To configure NIC teaming on your Windows based HP Proliant Server, you need to download HP Network Configuration Utility (HP NCU). This utility is available for download at HP.com. Once you download and install NCU, please open it. To know how to open NCU on your HP Server, please check my guide provided below.
If you are using Windows 2012 Server Operating System on your HP Server, then you could not use HP Network Configuration Utility. We need to use the inbuilt network team software of Windows here. Please check the below provided article about Windows 2012 Network team to learn more.
Let us continue with our Windows 2008/2003 based HP NCU here. Once you open NCU, you will find all the installed network cards are listed in it. As you can find from below provided screenshot, we have 4 NICs installed. Here, we will team first two NICs in NFT mode.
Let’s start
1. The HP Network Configuration Utility Properties window will look like the one provided below.
2. Select 2 NICs by clicking on it and then click Team button.
3. HP Network Team #1 will be created as shown below.
4. Select HP Network Team #1 and click on Properties button to change team properties.
5. The Team Properties Window will open now.
6. Here you can select the type of NIC team you want to implement (See below screenshot).
7. Here, I will select NFT from the Team Type Selection drop down list.
8. Click OK once you selected the desired Team type.
9. Now you will be at below provided screen now. Click OK to close HP NCU.
10. You will receive confirmation window prompting you to save changes, Click Yes.
11. HP NCU will configure NIC teaming now, the screen may look like the one provided below.
12. This may take some time, once Teaming is done, below provided window will be shown.
13. Open HP NCU, you could find that HP Network Team is in Green color. Congrats! 
How to set Static IP address for Teamed Network Adapters:
As you have created NIC Teaming on your server, you may go ahead and assign a static IP to it Or you can leave the settings in default and your DHCP server will assign an IP automatically. You need to perform below provided steps only if you are setting any static IP for your NIC team.
To assign an IP, you need to open control panel window and open Network connection window. You will find a new network card with name “HP Network Team #1”. When we create a Network Team, this Virtual NIC will be created. To assign an IP for the Teamed NICs, we have to assign IP address for this Virtual NIC “HP Network Team #1”.
14. To set an IP address for HP Network Team #1, please open Network Connection window from Control Panel.
14. Right-click on Local Area Connection 5 and click on Properties.
15. Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IP), and then click on Properties
16. You may set a Static IP for the Teamed NICs now.
17. Congratulation.
Whenever you update NIC drivers on your HP Servers, ensure that you dissolve the existing NIC teaming before you do it. You will find Dissolve button in HP NCU window. This is highly recommended by HP.
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Nice work Siru
Thank you for your comments, appreciate your positive feedback.
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Hello Siraj,
Thank you very much for creating this wonderful article. I was desperately looking for such online information from tricksguide. Another fantastic article added to the fabulous site!!. Thanks a lot.
Regards
Santosh Kannan
Dear Santosh,
Thank you very much for your comments, your wonderful comments really motivate me to write more and more articles.
Thanks again
SiRu
Excelente article! Congratulations!
Hi Juan,
Thanks for the comment. You may like/follow our facebook fan page so that you will receive my future articles
Regards
SiRu
Siru,
Excellent article. I’m regular visitor of your site and found very very useful to learn new stuff on HP Servers. Great !!! and Thank you so much for sharing.
Do you have any plans for writing a article on how to upgrade a HBA firmware? I found people are especially struggling to upgrade firmware on ESXi box and top of that they have HP Virtual Connect on it.
Hi Preetam,
Sorry for late reply!
Thanks for the comments. May I know the exact issue you are experiencing with HBA controller. At this moment, I do not have access to HBAs, but if you specify the issue in detail (Please use Contact Us form of my blog), then I can check personally and let you know any solution in person (Please allow me some time). I may not be writing a document as I do not have the hardware with me
I checked your blogs and it seems to very informative. But I am not an expert in Vmware, so probably you can help me
Regarsd
SiRu
Very informative. Good one! expecting more articles on your site(Includes real time issues)
Hi Vijay, thank you for comments.
Do like our facebook/google+ fan page for more updates
Nice article, The part about dissolving the team when updating drivers, makes me wonder if it is worth it. I see a number of things that could go wrong in an update. But if it break, it will be in a planned maintenance window, not at $RandomTime. After all the point with nic teaming is HA, not throughput.
Dissolving the team before updating the driver is recommended but not mandatory. I have seen that driver updates works even if the NIC is part of a team!!
Thanks for your comments
Excellent article. Can you shed light on what the Automatic Team Type selection does? i.e. if we don’t configure it?
As per the HP NIC Teaming whitepaper (Link is here), it says that NCU will choose the best for you (as per your network design and switches involved):
If you need correct information, please read below:
“The Automatic team type is not really an individual team type. Automatic teams decide whether to operate as an NFT or a TLB team or as an 802.3ad Dynamic team. If all teamed ports are connected to a switch that supports the IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP) and all teamed ports are able to negotiate 802.3ad operation with the switch, then the team will choose to operate as an 802.3ad Dynamic team.
However, if the switch doesn’t support LACP or if any ports in the team don’t have successful LACP negotiation with the switch, the team will choose to operate as a TLB team. As network and server configurations change, the Automatic team type ensures that HP ProLiant servers intelligently choose between TLB and 802.3ad Dynamic to minimize server reconfiguration.”
Regards
SiRu
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Great article however, after I teamed the nic and selected the static IP address I get a duplicate IP confilict message, no matter what IP I use… any suggestions?
In this case, you can set to accept dhcp based ip, instead of static ip. Please check whether it works
The static IP is probably held by one of you NICs.
I think you could do like this:
Remove the Teaming.
Change properties for all involved NICs to use DHCP.
Set up teaming again.
Now it should be possible to set a static IP for the teamed NICs.
Hi.
Do you know if there is there a way for administrators to be notified if one teamed link is unavailable due to cable being unplugged, email (I know it puts an “information” event into the event log, but we might miss that.)
Do you know if HP have a healthcheck script/tool that can check all your teamed nics are ok that we can report on in some way on a regular basis?
For example 3 out of 4 nics are up, I would like a command to show that there is only 75% availablilty for that teamed link.
Grant.
I can check whether it is is available, at this moment my answer is “I DO NOT know”. SOrry
Excellent work Siru, I can’t get better than this. Everything is so clear. All the best.
Hi Joyal.. Thanks a lot for your great feedback.
thanks for this information:
my quesation is I have 4 ports I was trying to use them all in one team so I can get 4Gbps the issue with this I have got flaping ip address ( MAC address) as I have 2 different switchrs.
is there a way to make that work with 2 different teaming having one ip address? so the first 2 work active and the and the other 2 work as idle
I am not sure whether can do it. If you are using Switch-assisted Load Balancing, then we cannot have switch level redundancy.
Really excellent articles published this site for whoever want to sharp their technical brain.
Thanks a lot
Thanks Senthil for your kind comments
Thank you for posting this article. Very helpful.
Btw, will you be able to post some HP Procurve useful articles?
Thank you.
I am sorry, I do not have access to any Procurve switches here, so probably in future
FYI, virtual NICs are apparently not supported by Windows Home Server 2011 or its sister Windows Small Business Essentials 2011. I enabled NIC teaming and lost Remote Access. I dissolved it and remote access worked fine.
Great document, well done.
thanks for your comments
Hi,
First of all, congratulation for this very good article!
I have a question regarding SLB and 802.3ab, I have an Proliant server with 4 NICS, for backup purpose and the network guys configure me either channel for those 4 NICS on Cisco switch (4 NICS are connected to the same switch, our switches are not stacked!), I need to choose the best option in order to use all NICS together to get 4Gb of bandwidth.
I understand that I need to use SLB do 802.3ab, but what does mean: “The main advantage of 802.3ad is that you do not have to manually configure your switch”?
Is it that ether channel is doesn’t need to be configured with this mode 802.3ab?
Which tools can I use to test and validate my configuration, kperf with monitoring in NUC?
In advance thank you.
Best regards.
Denis
If your switch supports 802.3ab’ then you can choose it. If not choose SLB from NCU. rest will be taken care by NCU.
Regarding monitoring tool, i am notnreally sure. I never usednany tools.
What are the methods to test if my network is redundant? I have a NIC Teaming configured and it shows green in color when I open the NCU. Further down I see the connection on my 2 adapters shows but 1 shows half blue and half faded. That means what? The connection is in complete.
To test redundancy, I disable one of the adapters like #2, the server was up and I didn’t lose the connection, once I’d disabled #3, it disconnected. Checked the server from iLO, it showed no Internet Access.
So, my question here is, to test the redundancy, are there any other methods available in the case where I don’t have to disable the adapters?
Thanks for the wonderful and informative site..!! Many Congratz..!!
~SG~
Could you let me know what type of TEAMINg you have configured. Which server model and what is the OS installed. Also can you share the screenshot at my email tricksguide at gmail dot com?
I will have a check.
Siru .. thanks for the step by step procedure.. If possible could you please provide us the breaking of Teaming it will great..
Breaking of Teaming is nothing but Dissolving the team. There is a DISSOVE option in Network configuration utility.
Remember: Once you dissolve the network teaming, you will need to re-create the TEAMING again. Unfortunately, we do not have a way to backup the teaming information to a file
Thanks Shan
Regards
SiRu