• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Second NICs for Server-to-Server communication

B

Brazen

Diamond Member
This is for DFS servers. I was wondering if there was a way to make all server-to-server communication, such as syncing files, to occur over the second NICs and allow ONLY server-to-server traffic on the second NICS.

Here is what I'm trying right now:

Server1/NIC1, Server1/NIC2, Server2/NIC1, and Server2/NIC2 are all plugged in to Switch1. Switch1 is the same switch that all our network traffic is going through. All NICs are on the same IP subnet. However, I removed the DNS entries for both NIC2s, so no workstations should be able to communicate with the NIC2s.

Then I added an entry in LMHOSTS on Server1 pointing to Server2/NIC2, so all traffic from Server 1 to Server2 should be directed to Server2/NIC2. And, I added an entry in LMHOSTS on Server2 pointing to Server1/NIC2, so all traffic from Server2 to Server1 should be directed to Server1/NIC2.

Since it is a switch, I see no advantage to moving the NIC2s off of Switch1 - traffic between the two NIC2s won't interfere with other ports on the switch, and we are not close to approaching the bandwidth limit of this switch.

If anybody has any ideas for improvements, I'd like to know. Also, I have no way of testing to be sure all the server to server traffic is occurring on the second NICs. If anyone knows of a good way to test and monitor this, I'd like to know.
 
how about install gigabic nics in the server and be done with it?

Generally making windows boxes work well with more than one NIC isn't worth the pain it will bring you later.
 
Originally posted by: Brazen
Generally making windows boxes work well with more than one NIC isn't worth the pain it will bring you later.
Click to expand...

Anything to back that up?
Click to expand...

yep. Windows still doesn't like to have more than one NIC. You can do it, but its a pain (AD registrations, services, clients trying to connect to the back-to-back network cards and not being routed, all kinds of fun with name resolution/mapping, now you have to worry about routing on the host)

with a gig nic you follow the "keep it simple stupid" univeral rule of IT. The server can't possible fill the gig network card so the bottleneck and need to use different networks is eliminated.
 
I'd hate to have to make hardware changes on our servers, and it looks like I've already taken care of all the problems spidey07 mentioned.

Has anyone been successful on using two NICs for Server traffic?
 
you could put the secondary nics into a different subnet and create a different vlan on the switch.

That would enable to you use the secondary IP network for server-server traffic by means of the name/address.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top