Multiple NICs, load balancing, and Windows 2003 Server.

[BatmanNate]

Hypothetically speaking, if a machine running 2003 server enterprise were to have several nics (2 or 3, maybe 4) and they all recieved IP's dynamically via DHCP from a seperate server on the network, would it be possible for the multiple nics to run some sort of load balancing? It would be a file server, with several connections directly into a switch to which clients are also plugged in. If several clients were downloading from the file server at once, would windows be smart enough to use seperate nics to increase the bandwidth of the server for multiple users? Also, will other windows machines view the server as a single server still? TIA,

Nate

 

[BatmanNate]

Bump.

 

[Goosemaster]

Yes. T


If your server is the bottleneck, however, this is pointless. What kind of a connection are you running?[10Mbps, 100, 1000...] what kind of harddrives do you use in the server?

 

[stephbu]

There are lots of 'it depends' answers here It is very hard to prescribe answers on such a broad topic - but I'll tell you what I know about the NIC solution that you described.

Combining multiple ethernet interfaces is called 'channel bonding' - it relies on a combination of NIC and switching support to do the right thing. Multiple NICs can improve multiproc machine scaleablility. Database log-shipping throughput is one place where I've seen this used before.

Have a hunt on google for 'ethernet channel bonding windows' and it'll give you a fair amount of relevant links.

This generally ain't a cheap exercise though, you're probably looking at enterprise-strength network interfaces and switching to enable this sort of activity - Compaq/Intel/Cisco etc. In many scenarios (file, print, webappsvr etc.) it is often far more cost efficient and more reliable to build-out and virtually 'cluster' machines with software or hardware NLB. For file-server scale-out options partitioning (DFS), replication (FRS) or combinations of the two have a role to play.

Edit: As usual - there is no *right* answer or substitute for testing and evaluation. Usually by removing one bottleneck you reveal others. Most hardware vendors are usually willing to work with you to engineer and evaluate systems that will perform best for your application and environment.

 

[BatmanNate]

Thanks for the answers, guys. The machine has several PATA RAID-5 and RAID-0 arrays, and the connection is just a 100Mb switched LAN. A lot of data transfer goes one now and then between multiple clients and the server, and I have some extra nics laying around so I just wanted to try it out.