Hyper-V NIC Team Load Balancing Algorithm: TranportPorts vs Hyper-VPorts

Question

Hi, 
I'm going to need to configure a NIC team for the LAN traffic for a Hyper-V 2012 R2 environment. What is the recommended load balancing algorithm? 
Some background:
- The NIC team will deal with LAN traffic (NOT iSCSI storage traffic)
- I'll set up a converged network. So there'll be a virtual switch on top of this team, which will have vNICs configured for each cluster, live migration and management
- I'll implement QOS at the virtual switch level (using option -DefaultFlowMinimumBandwidthWeight) and at the vNIC level (using option -MinimumBandwidthWeight)
- The CSV is set up on an Equallogics cluster. I know that this team is for the LAN so it has nothing to do with the SAN, but this reference will become clear in the next paragraph. 
Here's where it gets a little confusing. I've checked some of the Equallogics documentation to ensure this environment complies with their requirements as far as storage networking is concerned. However, as part of their presentation the Dell publication
TR1098-4, recommends creating the LAN NIC team with the TrasportPorts Load Balancing Algorithm. However, in some of the Microsoft resources (i.e. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn550728.aspx), the recommended load balancing algorithm is HyperVPorts.
Just to add to the confusion, in this Microsoft TechEd presentation, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed7HThAvp7o, the recommendation (at around minute 8:06) is to use dynamic ports algorithm mode. So obviously there are many ways to do this, but which one is
correct? I spoke with Equallogics support and the rep said that their documentation recommends TransportPorts LB algorithm because that's what they've tested and works. I'm wondering what the response from a Hyper-V expert would be to this question. Anyway,
any input on this last point would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Gleb,
>>See Windows Server 2012 R2 NIC Teaming (LBFO) Deployment and Management  for more
info
Thanks for this reference. It seems that I have an older version of this document where there's absolutely
no mention of the dynamic LBA. Hence my confusion when in the Microsoft TechEd presentation the
recommendation was to use Dynamic. I almost implemented this environment with switch dependent and Address Hash Distribution because, based on the older version of the document, this combination offered: 
a) Native teaming for maximum performance and switch diversity is not required; or
b) Teaming under the Hyper-V switch when an individual VM needs to be able to transmit at rates in excess of what one team member can deliver
The new version of the document recommends Dynamic over the other two LBA. The analogy that the document
makes of TCP flows with human speech was really helpful for me to understand what this algorithm is doing. For those who will never read the document, I'm referring to this: 
"The outbound loads in this mode are dynamically balanced based on the concept of
flowlets.  Just as human speech has natural breaks at the ends of words and sentences, TCP flows (TCP communication streams) also have naturally
occurring breaks.  The portion of a TCP flow between two such breaks is referred to as a flowlet.  When the dynamic mode algorithm detects that a flowlet boundary has been encountered, i.e., a break of sufficient length has occurred in the TCP flow,
the algorithm will opportunistically rebalance the flow to another team member if apropriate.  The algorithm may also periodically rebalance flows that do not contain any flowlets if circumstances require it.    As a result the affinity
between TCP flow and team member can change at any time as the dynamic balancing algorithm works to balance the workload of the team members. "
Anyway, this post made my week. You sir are deserving of a beer!