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I've got a server with Windows Server 2012 R2 installed on it. 1 NIC on the server is used for management purposes and I've teamed the 3 other NICs which communicate with our SAN to carry out VM backups.

I'm also aware that Windows offers the MPIO feature for managing load balancing and redundancy. My question then is this:

Since I have my NIC's teamed, should I also setup MPIO or will teaming alone do the job? Is there any harm in using MPIO and teaming? Is one better than the other?

jrd1989
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    If you are using iSCSI to connect to your SAN, you do not want to use teaming at all and only use MPIO. For reasons why, see http://serverfault.com/questions/510882/why-mpio-instead-of-802-3ad-team-for-iscsi – Rex Dec 08 '15 at 17:54

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If you are using the network to access storage (i.e. iSCSI), then you should avoid NIC teaming and use MPIO.

If you are using the network to transfer data, you can use NIC teaming to achieve fault tolerance and higher bandwidth (but this usually requires support from the switch, too).

Thus, the answer depends on what you actually mean with "communicate with our SAN to carry out VM backups"...

Massimo
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  • A LUN was created on the SAN to hold backups. The SAN has its own VLAN, separate from the management network. The server and the SAN are separated by a 1gb switch so the 3 nics I teamed are connected to the 1gb switch and their ports are configured to the SAN VLAN. I used the iscsi initiator tool to locate the LUN for backups and mounted it as a local partition - E drive. The application I use then backs up VM's to this partition. My issues is throughput - the time taken to carry out backups is too long for my liking and I'd like to decrease it if possible. – jrd1989 Dec 08 '15 at 18:20
  • Ok, so this network is actually used to access storage via iSCSI. You should use MPIO, not NIC teaming. – Massimo Dec 08 '15 at 18:29