How to configure NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012 R2
How to configure NIC teaming in Windows Server 2012 R2
What is NIC Teaming?
If you are also confused about the term NIC teaming and not sure about the steps to configure NIC teaming then we’ll help you understand the same. NIC Teaming is a method of unifying two or more than two network cards. This method of combining two network cards can be used as a fail-over. This type of fail-over is used to prevent the loss of connectivity in a network. In NIC Teaming, we’ll configure network cards in such a way that they establish a load balance relationship between them. Creating a NIC team will eliminate the risk of fault and any faulty network card will not impact on connectivity.
You can also use a software of configure NIC teaming, however in this article, we’ll help you with the steps to configure NIC teaming in Windows Server 2012 R2.
Steps to configure NIC Teaming
First steps towards configuring NIC teaming is to have atleast 2 NIC cards. We have already added three NIC cards in this server. Ethernet0, Ethernet1 and Ethernet2. We’ll use Ethernet1 and Ethernet2 to configure NIC teaming.
1. To create NIC teaming, right click on Start and click on Network Connection to open the network connections console.
2. On Network Connection console, we can see all the network adapters we have in our server.
3. Open command prompt and type “ipconfig” to verify the IP addresses of all three network cards. Ethernet0 has an IP address 192.168.1.11 whereas other ethernet adapters have APIPA IP address because there is no static IP address on them and DHCP server is also not available.
4. Open Server Manager and then click on Local Server. Here we can see that NIC teaming is disabled. To configure NIC teaming click on Disabled.
5. On NIC teaming console then, click on Tasks to create a New Team.
6. On NIC Teaming console enter Team name. In this scenario, we have used Team01 as a team name. Select the Network adapters to be added in a NIC team from the listed available network adapters. We will use Ethernet1 and Ethernet2 as a member of Team01. Click on ok to continue.
7. We can verify the member network adapters of the NIC Team and can also check that which network adapter is active or not.
8. On NIC Teaming console, We can see all the NIC teams of this computer and also check their state, status, team.
9. Right click on the Start Menu and then select Network Connections. In this console, we can see all the networks Adapters and the NIC team which we have created. To open the properties of New NIC Team (Team01), Right click on Team01 then click on properties to assign static IP address.
10. On Team01 properties console uncheck the option of IPv6 (as we are not using IPv6) and select IPv4 option and then click on properties.
11. On Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) properties console, Select the option of Use the following IP address and type an IP address i.e. 192.168.1.100 (as per your requirement) and then click on the Subnet mask option. It would assign the Subnet mask automatically i.e. 255.255.255.0.
12. Now, click on Ok to apply the settings and to close the console.
13. To verify if the IP is changed or not, Let’s open command prompt and type ipconfig command to check the newly assigned IP address.
On the screen we can see that new IP Address is assigned to Ethernet adapter Team01 i.e. 192.168.1.100.
With this we have successfully configured NIC teaming. You can check the NIC teaming by pinging it continuously from another computer using the command ping 192.168.1.100 -t. Now, disable one NIC card of the Team01 i.e. either Ethernet1 or Ethernet2 and it would still ping the server without any impact.