Network Load balancing

I am working on a new server for a large company. It is a 4u case with a Tyan Thunder Pro s2721 motherboard with dual 2.4ghz xeons. 2gig of 2700ddr and 4 SCSI 70 gig 320 drives. It also has two 10/100/1000 Gbe ports by intel 82546eb controllers. they are operating on a independent bus at 133mhz. also one 10/100 port with a intel 82551qm controller. This give me three lan ports. The OS is win-2K server 45 client with exchange 2K server and SQL server running on it. My problem is load balancing the three ports. I have 768 dsl with a cisco broadband modem running into a realteck router/firewall 4port. One ? do I need the router that is running 20 vpns and ftp server since the new server will do all that. And how do i load balance.

Thank you

speedy

 

Speedy - first off, welcome to the forum.

If you mean the NLB (network load balancing) that is available with 2K AS (advanced server) and Data Center Server operating systems, then more info needed. NLB is designed to set up a cluster of servers to server up the same application (or applications) and the load balancing refers to having client traffic sent to the cluster member that is least busy.

Having at least 2 network cards in each server is a good idea since they can use one card for internal (among the clustered servers) communications as to the state of the cluster and who is busy.

And BTW - NLB is not available with the plain server OS. Only AS and Data Center Server.

If you are talking about something other than NLB/clustering, please provide more info. Since you mentioned having 3 network cards, I wondered it you meant teaming the NICs to make them act like a single mega-NIC.

And you said "do I need the router that is running 20 vpns and ftp server since the new server will do all that ". I'm not really sure exactly what you meant so more explanation maybe?