A system administrator wants to create a server with network redundancy and maximum I/O throughput over two Ethernet cards. Which option will support the requirement?

802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) combines two physical Ethernet adapters into one logical channel, distributing traffic across both links to maximize I/O throughput. It also provides network redundancy because traffic automatically shifts to the surviving link if one fails. The connected switch must also support 802.3ad to negotiate the aggregation, which the question specifies.

Network Interface Backup provides failover redundancy by switching to a standby NIC when the primary fails, but only one NIC is active at a time, so it does not increase I/O throughput.

Creating ifcfg-bond0 is a Linux kernel bonding configuration method and is not the correct approach for AIX systems, which manage link aggregation through AIX-specific tooling.

Assigning a virtual adapter alone does not aggregate the physical NICs into a standards-based, high-throughput channel and does not satisfy both the redundancy and throughput requirements.