Multiple NICs in Multiple Servers in Win 2003

[Brad Smith]

I hope this is the right place for a Win 2003 question. I can't find a Win 2003 forum.

We have 3 Dell 2650 servers with 2 on board BroadCom Gigabit NICs and an Intel Pro 1000 board with 2 ports. That means each server have 4 gigabit ether net ports (or adapters)

These are not clustered but one is a domain controller, one is a SQL server and one is a terminal services server.

The TS has a single 100 MB ethernet connection to our users (so it has 3 available 100 GB NIC ports).

I would like to be able to reduntantly connect there 3 servers together. On all systems/adapters I've got a mask of 255.255.255.0.

On the TS server I've configured 3 adapters with:
192.168.2.21
192.168.2.22
192.168.2.23

In the SQL server I've got:
192.168.2.11
192.168.2.12
192.168.2.13
192.168.2.14

On the DC I've got:
192.168.2.1
192.168.2.2
192.168.2.3

This all works fine and I can ping all of these addresses from any server.

However, all traffic seems to always be going through a single NIC. If I pull the plug on this adapter this system looses all connectivity to all the other servers.

I've never done anything like this. The reason I'm trying this is because I originally was using a single adapter in each server going to my Gigibit switch. We lost the one adapter port in one the systems and I tried to move the cable from it to another NIC only to find that was defective now as well. Fortunately there were 2 more I could try and I eventually found one that worked.

I want to try to set this up with redundancy build using the 4 NICs in the 3 servers. I'm not familiar with NLB and everything I've read refers to this in a clusted environment. I'm not using clustering I just need redundancy buiild into the network since I've got multiple NICs in each server and I'd like to know if an adapter get fried so I don't want to just leave them unplugged.

Any suggestions and articles describing what I'm trying to accomplish would be much appreciated.

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

I hope this is the right place for a Win 2003 question. I can't find
a Win 2003 forum.

We have 3 Dell 2650 servers with 2 on board BroadCom Gigabit NICs and
an Intel Pro 1000 board with 2 ports. That means each server have 4
gigabit ether net ports (or adapters)

These are not clustered but one is a domain controller, one is a SQL
server and one is a terminal services server.

The TS has a single 100 MB ethernet connection to our users (so it
has 3 available 100 GB NIC ports).

I would like to be able to reduntantly connect there 3 servers
together. On all systems/adapters I've got a mask of 255.255.255.0.

On the TS server I've configured 3 adapters with:
192.168.2.21
192.168.2.22
192.168.2.23

In the SQL server I've got:
192.168.2.11
192.168.2.12
192.168.2.13
192.168.2.14

On the DC I've got:
192.168.2.1
192.168.2.2
192.168.2.3

This all works fine and I can ping all of these addresses from any
server.

However, all traffic seems to always be going through a single NIC.
If I pull the plug on this adapter this system looses all
connectivity to all the other servers.

I've never done anything like this. The reason I'm trying this is
because I originally was using a single adapter in each server going
to my Gigibit switch. We lost the one adapter port in one the
systems and I tried to move the cable from it to another NIC only to
find that was defective now as well. Fortunately there were 2 more I
could try and I eventually found one that worked.

I want to try to set this up with redundancy build using the 4 NICs
in the 3 servers. I'm not familiar with NLB and everything I've read
refers to this in a clusted environment. I'm not using clustering I
just need redundancy buiild into the network since I've got multiple
NICs in each server and I'd like to know if an adapter get fried so I
don't want to just leave them unplugged.

Any suggestions and articles describing what I'm trying to accomplish
would be much appreciated.

Hi Brad,

Using mutli NICs on the same subnet such as this would wind up using one
NIC, specifically the one at the top of the binding order.

To utilize all of them together, you would need to "team" them. NIC teaming
is specific to the NIC vendor. Consult the vendor's docs on the NIC driver
and they should tell you, if the feature is available on that specific NIC,
how it's done.

--
Regards,
Ace

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This posting is provided "AS-IS" with no warranties and confers no
rights.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2000, MCSE+I, MCSA, MCT, MVP
Microsoft Windows MVP - Active Directory