SQL Server 2014 and Scalability Improvements with Windows Server 2012 R2

SQL Server 2014 now takes advantage of NIC teaming feature provided by Windows Server 2012 R2 to improve enterprise-class scalability resulting in reduced infrastructure cost and predictable
performance, the magic words (mantras) you love to hear.

But what is NIC Teaming?

NIC teaming also known as Load Balancing Failover(LBFO) is Load Balancing Failover(LBFO)- a feature that allows multiple network adapters on a computer to be placed in a team (group) for the following express purposes:

*Bandwidth aggregation
*Prevent connectivity loss in a network failure event

NIC Teaming architecture
Teaming architectures are pretty much the same across vendors. Baiscally two or more physical networks adpaters(nic)are connected to a NIC Teaming solution to multiplex them to one or more virtual adapters called team network adpaters (tnic) as shown.

Here is a teaming solution from VMWare.

There are two swithching algorithms used in NIC Teaming:

• Switch dependent mode: Switch participates in teaming
• Switch idnependent-mode: Switch makes teaming possible but does not participate

There are two common choices for teacming in switch-dependent mode:

• Generic or static teaming (IEEE 802.3ad draft v1) - prone to errors in configuration as it is static
• Dynamic teaming (IEEE 802.1ax, LACP)-Uses Link Aggregation Control Protocol and leverages automatic team creation.

Features of NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012

Traffic distribution:

Hyper-V swithc port
Hashing Algorithms

There is both NIC Teaming Managment Interface as well as Powershell commandlets to manage teaming.

Your master reference to Microsoft NIC teaming is found here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831648.aspx

Also read up on this:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/support/landing_pages/Virtual-Support-Day-Best-Practices-Virtual-Networking-June-2012.pdf
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-3729