How many NICS for Virtual Server 2005

[InlineFour]

my server will run microsoft virtual server 2005 and have one virtual OS. the real OS will be a domain controller/file server and the virtual OS will be the exchange server. the server currently has one NIC.

should i add a second NIC for the exchange server so each OS has its own NIC?

 

[spyordie007]

You dont need a second NIC for it.

 

[Thor86]

You can have an many Virtual nics as you want.

 

[InlineFour]

i thought that one NIC could be a bottleneck for the server if there are lare file transfers going on.

 

[azev]

how much traffic are you going to push ?? if its is for a home lab, one nic is more than plenty.

 

[InlineFour]

yeah, this is only for home use.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: InlineFour
i thought that one NIC could be a bottleneck for the server if there are lare file transfers going on.

Well sure if there is going to be a lot of traffic over the physical NIC it could become a bottleneck. The question you need to ask is "how much traffic am I going to push?"

When you're talking about Exchange and Active Directory 100Mb goes a very long way.

 

[Rilex]

Since all offloading/checking needs to be turned off on the physical NIC, it can be a performance bottleneck (to the point of failures), even on smaller SMB transfers.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: Rilex
Since all offloading/checking needs to be turned off on the physical NIC, it can be a performance bottleneck (to the point of failures), even on smaller SMB transfers.

For multi-user file servers yes, but not most home/test networks this is not an issue.