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I've been asked to build a server and team the nics, my understanding is the nics should each be dhcp enabled and the team should be configured with a static ip. Would this be correct and also what items should be enabled on the adapter .. Should it only have "network adapter multiplexor protocol" checked? Or should it have IPv4 and link later topology checked

Thanks in advance :)

Norrin Rad
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  • "dhcp enabled" or "the team should be configured with a static ip' - which one is it, it's one or the other but can't be both - really it's should be static - and you should ask someone who's done this before to do it, don't mean to be rude but this isn't something to learn in production. – Chopper3 May 10 '16 at 15:03
  • I'it's fine, no offence taken, I've done this before but always left the nics as dhcp and assigned a static ip to the team, but a colleague has suggested I've done it wrong and the nics should all have their own static ip, however I don't see the function that would serve as once they become part of a team their independent ip is disregarded, hope that makes sense and thanks for the quick response – Norrin Rad May 10 '16 at 18:29
  • That makes no sense at all, sorry – Chopper3 May 10 '16 at 18:36
  • Lol ok simplified .. Nic 1 and mic 2 both assigned by dhcp .. Combined to make a team called team 1, then team 1 is assigned a static ip .. My question is do nic 1 and nic 2 need to have static ips configured prior to being added to team 1 – Norrin Rad May 10 '16 at 18:42
  • No, there (in the eyes of the OS) different connections. You can do but you may as well spend the time making the team and setting the static on that. – tombull89 May 10 '16 at 18:43
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    Once the individual NICS are in the Team you can't do anything with them can you? certainly settings get ignored anyway. – Chopper3 May 10 '16 at 18:44
  • Your colleague is totally wrong. You should not assign different IP addresses to each NIC in the team. After you create the team, you assign IP and VLAN settings to the virtual team interface. The phrase "DHCP enabled" is confusing in this context because in Windows that's the same thing as "not configured". Probably saying "not configured" would make the question clearer. – Todd Wilcox May 10 '16 at 20:02

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Your colleague is totally wrong. You should not assign different IP addresses to each NIC in the team. After you create the team, you assign IP and VLAN settings to the virtual team interface.

Regarding advanced layer 2 features like TCP Chimney Offload and RSS, etc., it depends on the NIC manufacturer whether those features are compatible with Windows NIC teaming and whether they should be configured at all. See here.

If in doubt, leave everything default and/or unconfigured on the NICs to be teamed. Also, I agree with Chopper that if you are building one or more Hyper-V hosts for production purposes for the first time, you should ideally both do a lot of research and consult with or hire a professional, as well as do a lot testing and practice builds. You can put a retail trial of Server 2012 R2 on a desktop computer with an extra NIC or two added in and experiment with settings and practice. You really want to understand how your specific server interfaces and switches work together and separately, as well as understand Hyper-V virtual networking.

Todd Wilcox
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