Hi OvalPiston,
The driver you downloaded is correct for Windows 2012. Link aggregation does support fault tolerance and combines multiple adapters into single channel to maximize the bandwidth. See definition stated at
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/network-and-i-o/ethernet-products/000005667.html
"Combines multiple adapters into a single channel to provide greater bandwidth. Bandwidth increase is only available when connecting to multiple destination addresses. ALB mode provides aggregation for transmission only while RLB, SLA, and IEEE 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation modes provide aggregation in both directions. Link aggregation modes require switch support, while ALB and RLB modes can be used with any switch."
2) In response to your question here"But if the two ports were plugged into the same switch and those two computers that communicated with the server were also plugged into the same switch, they'd be sharing the 1Gbps connection. Is that correct?"
If this is configured as Link aggregation mode, it will transmit and receive in aggregated speed of 2 Gbps when connecting to multiple destination addresses.
3) In response "How would I configure the NIC with the two switches to give both fault tolerance and so each computer can communicate at their own full 1Gbps speed? (i.e. when both are transferring multi-GB files)"
Fault tolerance refers to when one link partner fail, the other link partner will take over. With your I350-T2, one port connects to one switch, the other port to another switch and configured as SFT, this is a fault tolerance setup already to ensure the network continues even if one of the port or switch fail but SFT does not support link aggregation.
The aggregated speed is achieve if you configured the NIC as Link aggregation mode which required the ports of the NICs to connect to single switch only and make sure the switch
needs to support link aggregation.
Thanks,
wb
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