Configuring Dual NICS for Redundancy

G'Day All,

After fruitless searching on the net I'm wondering if anyone has any experience of setting up dual NICs in a fail-on-fault configuration.

I've got some new IBM x3500 servers with dual Broadcom Netxtreme Gigabit NICs. We're running Server 2003 R2 on these boxes. All is well but I just want to configure the NICs for redundancy.

I've looked at MS Network Load Balancing service but this looks like using a chainsaw for pruning approach and has the potential for things to go pear shaped.

Can anybody help with this??

Thanks...Oz

 

Don't know what to tell ya Oz.
I have configured a lot of servers and never came across this situation.

The real purpose for dual Nics is to make the server a firewall/Router, Proxi Server, or dual LANs.

 

Sorry Scott, I have to disagree with that statement. Using multiple NIC has been a well documented way of providing fault tolerance and high rate data transfer for high availability servers for some time. It was more prevalent before gigabit Ethernet became widely available, as then it was the simplest way of getting greater than 100Mb/s connection from a server into the core of a big network.

The feature you are look for is adapter teaming. It is the ease of set up and reliance of this sort of feature, that separates a Server NIC from the NIC installed in your average computer.

I'd highly recommend using Intel server NIC if you want this sort of availability. It is just the sort of thing they do very well. Other dedicated Network chipset manufactures do make server NICs but they are getting harder to find (for example, 3Com used to make a good range), and my personal preference would be towards Intel server NICs.

Something like an Intel PRO/1000 PT Server Adapter:
http://www.intel.com/network/connectivity/products/pro1000pt_server_adapter.htm

You can get multi-port versions of this card. These are great if throughput is your main aim for teaming. For simple fault tolerance, you may well be better off with multiple single port cards, as a multi-port card has an obvious single point of failure - the card itself.

Intel server cards will also team with the NICs built into Intel Server boards. Yet another reason to use Intel server boards in server - the hardware is better.

 

I knew about the dual port NICs but I wasn't aware of doing it with dual NICs.

 

In the old days, you had no choice but to use multiple cards. The problem then was the number of slots you had available as each NIC takes up a slot. Multiport cards was the answer.

The first dual port cards were effectively two NICs on one card. However, as they got more sophisticated, more of the chipset on the cards were shared between each NIC, until now when you are effectively adding a small network switch on a card.

 

Thanks

Reggie,

Thanks for the info. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. From what I'm reading this looks a fairly easy procedure with an Intel server NIC.

Unfortunately we've just got the standard IBM supplied Broadcoms. So it looks like I'll have to work out NLB. Not a biggie anyway. Just one of the many projects I'm working on at the moment.

Thanks again.

Oz

 

I would have thought that IBM server NIC would support this facility. Have you talked to IBM support about it?