Network Load Balancing w/ Windows 2008 Server

[Keitero]

I have my server setup with Windows 2008 Server Enterprise Edition with two Gigabit NICs. I want to be able to do NLB across both NICs in one network so that if I need to pull more than one gigabit/second from the server, I can without my transfers slowing down. The issue is that I can't seem to get the NLB Manager to allow me to do so. It keeps telling me that one adapter can't merge or something. Anyone have any ideas or howtos to get it working?

 

[Madwand1]

You should look at teaming / link aggregation options for the NICs, or for (server class) NICs which have such teaming options. Intel, Broadcom, Syskonnect (Marvell) among others all have some support for doing this -- at least in their server class products.

You'd also likely need a switch which supports link aggregation (802.3ad/LACP).

Note also that no single connection / transfer would be able to exceed a single NIC's performance, although, with multiple transfers happening concurrently, you can get overall performance better than a single NICs (in some cases).

 

[Keitero]

That's what I am hoping as I have an SQL server that's going to run on it as well as my file server. I don't think that my switches support link aggregation nor do I think that my Agere & Realtek onboard NICs have link aggregation as well.

 

[RebateMonger]

I'm far from an NLB expert, but I believe that:
a) NLB is intended to distribute loads among multiple servers
b) NLB is primarily for "stateless" connections with multiple servers SQL Server is not typically "stateless".

As noted, what you want is usually done with "teaming" using proprietary software by the NIC maker.

 

[Czar]

I use NLB for a few setups at work. Two iis servers are set up the same (clone in vmware) they are given different ip addresses, nlb is set up on a third ip address for both servers.

Teaming is if you have two or more nics on a servers