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NIC Teaming with Windows 2008 R2 and SQL 2008 R2

I have a physcial single Windows 2008 R2 SQL server with 1 nic that has a number of instances supplying data to various applications (IIS, monitoring, ect). The server itself has 1 other physical nics available and I would like to team together with nic 1. This is primary for fault-tolerance rather than load balancing. Both nics will be connected to the same vlan (vlan 13), how can I accomplish this?

Specs:
Windows 2008 R2 Server with SQL running - physical not virtual
1- nic is a Intel gig connection
1 -nic is a Broadcom gig connection

Both connections will goto a Cisco stack that will be in the same vlan (vlan 13), just different physical switch.

Restrictions:
I can't upgrade to Windows 2012, management will not go for it at this time.

Is this possible? Does this have to be done at the OS level or can it be done at the hardware level?

Thanks?

Cliff Galiher

In 2008 R2 and earlier, NIC teaming is a solution provides by the NIC vendor, not the OS. As such, mixing MIC brands is not possible from a practical standpoint.

ServerService

You have possibility to bridge the Nics but not the fine tuning possibility of Nic teaming as in server 2012.
Nic teaming is one of the new features in 2012 server and your Boss should try to use money if you want to move on to next level.