I’m going to do this all using HP Proliants …<\/p>\n
Here’s the scenario.\u00a0 There’s going to be a number of web servers running Windows Server 2003.\u00a0 They’ll work cooperatively and share files somehow.\u00a0 They must be load balanced using Windows NLB.\u00a0 This means using the Unicast method with 2 NIC’s – Unicast allows the servers to talk to each other within the cluster.\u00a0 HP Proliant servers come a pair of built-in NIC’s so you’d think you’re sorted.\u00a0 Nope!\u00a0 You must allow for NIC failure so that means putting in 4 NIC’s and creating two NIC teams, each consisting of a pair of physical NIC’s.<\/p>\n
A NIC team is created using at least 2 NIC’s in the HP Network Configuration Utility (NCU).\u00a0 The newly created virtual NIC has a virtual MAC address or Locally Administered Address (LAA).<\/p>\n
Here’s the problem.\u00a0 When you associate a NIC with a NLB cluster, you are applying a virtual MAC to it.\u00a0 This MAC is applied identically to all of the NLB NIC’s on every server in the cluster.\u00a0 Now think … your NLB NIC is actually a virtual NIC made from two physical NIC’s and already has a virtual MAC or LAA.\u00a0 So which LAA should be applied?\u00a0 The correct answer is the LAA of the NLB cluster<\/a>.\u00a0 This is because the IP address of the NLB cluster is associated with the LAA that should be assigned to the NLB NIC (the NIC team).\u00a0 Without it having the right LAA, the Ethernet cannot direct traffic to it.<\/p>\n Normally you’d go into the properties of the NIC and configure the driver to set the LAA.\u00a0 You can’t do this with a HP NIC team.\u00a0 Instead, once you’ve associated a server’s NIC team with the NLB cluster, just open the HP NCU.\u00a0 You’re warned that it knows there should be a different LAA for the team in question.\u00a0 That’s cool.\u00a0 Just click on OK to save the new configuration and you’re sorted.\u00a0 Do not click on cancel to exit the NCU because it won’t save the NLB LAA for you.<\/p>\n Just repeat this process on each of the nodes in the NLB cluster and you’re sorted.<\/p>\n EDIT:<\/p>\n In practice, I found that the HP NCU in the HP PSP V8.0 is buggy.\u00a0 I tested this thing endlessly yesterday and it was fine.\u00a0 Then all of a sudden, without change, it broke overnight.\u00a0 Node1 could not see the network (or Node2) but the network could see it.\u00a0 Removing Node1 from the cluster repaired the network.\u00a0 Adding it back in broke things again.\u00a0 Doing the LAA dance in NCU fixed it for about 1 second (showing on a continuous ping).\u00a0 The logic of it didn’t make sense … LAA issues would affect inbound connectivity to the NLB cluster IP but not outbound connectivity.\u00a0 In the end I disabled teaming of the NLB NIC’s on both of the nodes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m going to do this all using HP Proliants … Here’s the scenario.\u00a0 There’s going to be a number of web servers running Windows Server 2003.\u00a0 They’ll work cooperatively and share files somehow.\u00a0 They must be load balanced using Windows NLB.\u00a0 This means using the Unicast method with 2 NIC’s – Unicast allows the servers … Continue reading “Windows Network Load Balancing and NIC Teaming”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}