Hello champs,
This may sound like a basic query so please pardon my ignorance. Unfortunately, I am not able to find anything on the internet that would help me understand the following behaviour hence the query.
I have configured two ESXi VMs with Windows Server 2012 (R2 to be precise but shouldn't matter) to try out some basic NIC teaming concepts. I created a NIC team with the default options using two of my (virtual) Ethernet adapters connected to the same ESXi vSwitch. I assign an IP address to the primary interface and start an indefinite ping to this IP address from a different VM. Now, the Properties dialog of the primary interface displays a value for the 'Permanent address' field which (I understand) is the MAC address (of the primary team member) on which it is listening for inbound traffic. The query...
The ping succeeds as long as the primary member or the MAC address specified at the 'Permanent address' field is up and running. I can disable the other Ethernet adapter in the team and the ping still works. However, if I disable or disconnect the Ethernet adapter which happens to be the primary member of the team, the ping stops! The only way to get the ping back with the (now) primary team member disabled is to reboot the VM which in turn should elect a new primary member and have the team listen on its MAC address.
Unless I am fundamentally missing something, I take this is by design. But doesn't this behaviour make the primary member a single-point-of-failure in the entire NIC team design? In other words, I could team up to 32 physical adapters but the configuration is resilient only until the primary team member is available. Ideally, I would have expected Windows to pick a new primary member on-the-fly and notify the virtual switch about the MAC change or do some kind of MAC spoofing which I guess happens in guest NIC teaming.
Can someone please ratify my understanding or enlighten me as to what am I missing? Any pointers to relevant articles would be much appreciated.
Thank you in anticipation.
Rolf