Using 2 NIC's in One server 1

[vdumatol]

Will this setup help our network congestion? Is this considered load balancing? How do i go about getting this configuration to work?

We are using Netware 5.1 w/ Groupwise 6 and DHCP.

any help or starting point info would be appreciated.

 

[dynamode]

Dropping a second NIC in the server should spread the network traffic but you will need to determine the heaviest users and distribute them between both NICs evenly. There are special "load balancing" NICs (3Com and Standrad Micro Systems to name two manuafacturers) that will spread the load "automatically" but they cost significantly more and need to be used with their own switches.

You should also consider using special Server NICs. These are NICs designed for file servers and are generally faster than standard NICs.

Are you using standard hubs or switches? Switches will give you beter throughput. Joshua Rothschild
j.rothschild@dynamode.com

 

[dkediger]

Further clarification to Joshua's reply:

Just putting in two (or 3 or 4) NICs won't automatically load balance unless the NICs and the switch they connect to support load balancing and teaming. You can find NICs from 3Com/Intel/others that actually have multiple ports on a single card.

Getting back to just dropping two NICs in a server - you will be creating an additional network segment that will need to have its own switch/hub to connect users. If you try to connect the two NICs to the same sitch/hub, Novell will start giving you "Router Configuration Errors" and you will probably lose connectivity with the server. Manually segmenting a network this way works, but to be effective, you need to distribute your users between segments. If you are using IP, you will also need to set the new NIC up on its own subnet, unless you want to get into manually adjusting some Novell config files.

 

[DrGreen26]

Another method you can use is using 2 or 3 nics, and lets say you have users on floors 2 that use the server heavily, users on floor 3 that use somewhat heavily, and users on floors 1, 4, and 5 that use the server light to moderately.

With three nics, I would configure the first one and connect it to floor 3. Making sure that this nic is in the same subnet as that floor.

I would route the second NIC to floor 2..

For all other users, I would connect this to a normal connecting point, ie server room switch etc.

THat will help offload traffic to those nics with heavy users etc.

Once Netware 6 is released, the OS will have the functionality built into it to load balance and provide fault tolerance for all standard network interfaces. I have seen this work at Brainshare and was very impressed.

Mark

Mark C. Greenwood, CNE
m_jgreenwood@yahoo.com

CNE 4.11 and CNE 5 certified. BS Degree in MIS. Working in the industry for 8 years.

I work with NT servers, NDS for NT as well.

 

[FredWagner]

Adding NICs is a little more tricky with IP, but for the record, I once was running 7 NICs in each of two primary servers - one 100BaseT on a backbone, two 10/100 for IP connectivity (one for Internet via IP/IPX gateway, other to connect to internal AIX server), and four Arcnet NICS - keep load on each arcnet segment down to 15-20 users. Later replaced on Arcnet NIC with TCNS to pilot 100 M/B to workstations, later converted whole caboodle to 100BaseT switched. Short answer, by all means load balance with more NICs

Fred Wagner
frwagne@ci.long-beach.ca.us

 

[dynamode]

You can't compare Arcnet to ethernet especially in load balancing situations. Arcnet CAN'T have collisions because Arcnet is a polling token protocol. In that scenario the delays occur when a workstation "holds" the token. This is very different than losing data when packets collide.

For more information about this I will discuss this offline. I can be reached at j.rothschild@dynamode.com. Joshua Rothschild
j.rothschild@dynamode.com

 

[vdumatol]

Thanks for all the helpful tips. The old admin tried to do this load balancing stuff but had problems with groupwise. I'll see if that happens now that we're not on direct access anymore.