I'm running into a bit of a debate with myself on what the best practice route is involving a new server my organization installed which I have to configure. It's a hyper V server and DELL R720 which came with Quad port NIC. Now first off, do I treat these as FOUR separate NICs or simply 4 ports on the Same NIC?
How would I connect these, is my primary question, Sure, I can just plug in one cable and have it connect to our switch, but I feel something's missing here.
I've read about teaming, bridging, but I end up confused.
Server 2008r2 has a "bridge" options which I'm able to combine all four into one IP. Is this what I want for redundancy and load balance?
Or do I obtain drivers/software from the NIC company, broadcom, and do some sort of teaming?