Windows 10 NIC Teaming and PowerShell

In recent months (as of this post), Microsoft decided to apparently cripple the UI panels for Teaming, VLANS, and a few other options in the Network Interface properties tab section. On update 1903 of Windows 10 Pro, this was very much so the case – no UI, but only PowerShell commands.

Assumptions:

  • You have already created a LACP/LAGG on the Switch/Router/Whatever the NIC on the machine is connecting to.
  • The NIC Team Ethernet ports are active to the switch.
  • Your switch and ethernet NIC supports IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation, AKA LACP.

The Tutorial…

Here’s a step by step to getting Teams (Teaming) functional on Windows 10 Pro using an Intel based NIC… with PowerShell.

  1. Remove any and all teams that exist on your machine – consider this a clean install of a team.
    • You will need to go to the Device Manager on the machine and remove the team, then remove the adapter drivers.
    • Ensure you’ve UNINSTALLED the drivers, not just a simple remove from the Device Manager.
  2. Download the Intel v24 (or whatever version it’s on now) from the Intel website: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25016
  3. Install the proper-bit variant version for your machine… chances are, it’s x64.
  4. Once installed, let Windows 10 re-detect the Intel NIC’s.
  5. Once re-detected, we’re going to PowerShell.
  6. Right click your start menu and click “PowerShell (Admin)” or WinKey + R, Type in “powershell” without the quotes, OK.
    1. PowerShell HAS TO BE RUN as Administrator – otherwise, this goes south, quick.
  7. Let’s get an idea of what Interfaces you’ve got running. Type: Get-IntelNetAdapter and press enter.
    • Note the interface NAMES that you wish to create a team of.
  8. Once we know the adapters to create a team of, we’ll be inputting the following command: New-IntelNetTeam -TeamMemberNames "Intel(R) Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T2 #2","Intel(R) Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T2" -TeamMode IEEE802_3adDynamicLinkAggregation -TeamName "Team01"
    • For me, I have a dual-port i350-T2 ethernet adapter – it gets the job done, and makes this process easy.
    • Team01 can be named whatever you wish it to be, but for simplicity sake, keep the name basic.
  9. When creating a team, it took about two minutes for this process to complete on my machine. It may appear frozen, but it’s working its magic.
  10. Once completed, the console will report back that the Primary and Secondary adapter was “NotSet”, let’s fix that…
  11. Type in: Set-IntelNetTeam -TeamName "Team01" -PrimaryAdapterName "Intel(R) Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T2 #2" -SecondaryAdapterName "Intel(R) Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T2" – You’ll need to replace the adapter name to whatever your adapters names are.
  12. This should take about 30 seconds tops.
  13. Once completed, the NIC should attempt to auto-negotiate a DHCP address using the primary NIC cards MAC address.
  14. Confirm the changes applied, type in Get-IntelNetAdapter once more to see if TEAM: was applied as a prefix to the desired NIC’s to be Teamed.

Here’s a screenshot of the three commands used as listed above…

The creation and set process.
The final check.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
3 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Carlos Zaffonatto
Carlos Zaffonatto
14 October 2022 1:22 pm

Windows 10

Get-NetAdapter
Get-NetSwitchTeam

New-NetSwitchTeam -Name “2Gpbs” -TeamMembers “Ethernet”,”Ethernet USB”
Remove-NetSwitchTeam -Name “2Gpbs”

Server
New-NetLbfoTeam -Name “Team1” -TeamMembers “NIC1″,”NIC2”