Broadcom Advanced Control Suite Team Management Grayed Out/Unavailable
Closed     Case # 10027     Affiliated Job:  BaBaDou DOT Com
Opened:  Friday, March 19, 2010     Closed:  Friday, March 19, 2010
Total Hit Count:  32024     Last Hit:  Thursday, December 5, 2024 2:15:59 PM
Unique Hit Count:  8467     Last Unique Hit:  Thursday, December 5, 2024 2:15:59 PM
Case Type(s):  Network, Server
Case Notes(s):  All cases are posted for review purposes only. Any implementations should be performed at your own risk.

Problem:
After installing the "Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 3" (BACS) onto a Dell PowerEdge 2950 running Windows 2008 64-bit with dual embedded Broadcom 5708 NICs using included 2008 drivers and running Hyper-V, I setup a network team of the two ports, named "NIC Team," with the "Team Management" being available (in the BACS) and the wizard guiding me through. There was a problem with the already established Hyper-V virtual NIC & my "NIC Team" so I tried to remove the newly created "NIC Team"; however, it just sat there for a while and I am impatient, so I restarted the machine. After restart, the "Team Management" option in the BACS was grayed out.

Action(s) Performed:
Total Action(s): 1
Action # Recorded Date Type Hit(s) User Expand Details
10100 3/19/2010 8:26:26 AM Network 5030 contact@danieljchu.com In a attempt to make this "Team Management" available again, I have tried a  More ...

Resolution:
In the end, my solution was to use the CLI "Command Line Interface" included with the BACS tool. Still with the Hyper-V role removed and after cleaning out the registry with the latest drivers and NICs freshly added, I used the following commands and manually created configuration file to add in the "NIC Team" with success.
-   Install the BACS (I performed this off version 3)
-   I created a file named "broadcom.bcg"
   o   name: NIC Team
   o   type: 0
   o   pnic: [Put the MAC address of NIC1 here]
   o   pnic: [Put the MAC address of NIC2 here & continue for additional NICs]
   o   ip: [IP of the NIC Team]
   o   smask: [Subnet Mask of the NIC Team]
   o   gw: [Gateway of the NIC Team]
   o   dns: [DNS of the NIC Team]
   o   dns: [Secondary DNS of the NIC Team]
   o   wsp: [WINS Primary of the NIC Team]
   o   wss: [WINS Secondary of the NIC Team]
-   OPTION 1: Use the BACS tool to import your manually created configuration file
   o   Control Panel/Broadcom Control Suite 3
   o   Although "Team Management" may not be available (as it wasn't for me), go to "File," select "Team Restore" and browse to the broadcom.bcg file
   o   On the pop up window, confirm the settings and create the team by clicking "Add/Save" (pulling this from memory, but I believe this is how the button was labeled)
   o   Your team will be created and for me a reboot was requested
-   OPTION 2: Open an elevated command window and guide yourself to C:\Program Files\Broadcom\BACS (or wherever you installed it)
   o   bacscli -t team "remove -c all" [this will remove any existing network teams in place, notice the quotes, use these.]
   o   bacscli -t team "add c:\broadcom.bcg" [this uses the configuration file created to build your network team]
   o   There is a great readme with sample cli commands located in the same directory.

After I got my "NIC Team" online and working, I deployed Hyper-V and selected my "NIC Team" as the interface of choice, and voila NIC redundancy for my server as well as my VMs.



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