HP Microserver N54L Link Aggregation 802.3ab (2 NICs Teaming/Bonding)

After upgraded both my N54L recently to the currently latest DSM5.1-5022-update2, bought additional NIC and managed to setup Synology Bonding

Actually I was testing to see whether the N54L able to setup Link Aggregation (LAG) by adding another NIC, so I bought the budget D-Link DGE-560T (Ver.B1) PCIE NIC to test first, turned out it works ! This is the PCIE NIC :

Installation 

Unscrew & unplug all connectors, remove the mobo tray out carefully

This is the NIC detail

Insert the NIC onto the PCIE slot

Done !

Managed Switch Configuration

Having 2 NICs is one thing, need to have a switch that able to support the Ling Aggregation protocol.

I'm using a budget 24-ports TP-Link TL-SG3424 L2 managed switch, setup as follows:

After setup the Bonding on DSM, then only insert both NIC cables to the switch

N54L DSM & RAID 

Both my N54L is running on current latest DSM5.1-5022-update2

Both units use 4 HDDs and setup as standard Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR)

Both units use WD RED NAS drive, size different only (4x2TB vs 4x3TB)

Read/Write Test - Backup Mode

Setup LAN backup mode from 1 to another

Read/Write Test - Shared Folder Sync Mode

Setup LAN folder sync mode from 1 to another

The above testing is purely 1 to 1 on LAN without other devices accessing them, I noticed the Sync mode seem to be slightly higher throughput than the Backup mode.  Both my N54L is on RAID1, I think overall throughput might increase if it's on RAID10...

Anyway, I'm satisfied with the speed, at least is good enough for my home NASes usage

I've also tested this NIC on my old PC HP DC7800 (mainly use for PLEX Transcoding) and the Bonding is working as well

However, I'm unable to setup Bonding with this NIC on another old PC Gigabytes GA-EP43-DS, may be it's not compatible with the on-board LAN port ...

With 2 NICs, can also consider to setup High Availability (HA) since the HA feature comes as standard with the DS3615xs version 
Note: HA must have minimum 2 separate NIC (not Bonding) to function

Might find some time to test it out later ...