How to Use a Switch to Interconnect Windows NT Load Balancing Service Cluster Hosts

ID: Q193602

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

The purpose of this article is to describe how to interconnect two or more Windows NT Load Balancing Service (WLBS) servers in a switched environment.


MORE INFORMATION

Using the following configuration, all versions of Windows NT Load Balancing Service can be very effectively used in a switched environment. For each host:

  1. Connect the cluster network interface card (NIC) to a hub, which is, in turn, uplinked to a switch port.


  2. Do not set the gateway address for the WLBS Virtual adapter in the TCP/IP configuration dialog.


  3. Connect the dedicated NIC to a free switch port.


  4. Set the necessary gateway address for the dedicated NIC.


This configuration delivers the best possible results. Requests to the cluster will flow through the hub to all of the cluster NICs. The appropriate host will reply through its dedicated NIC (because this NIC has the gateway information associated with it), which connects to a dedicated switch port. In addition to increased bandwidth, this approach improves the pipelining of traffic, reduces collisions, and makes better use of multiprocessor servers.

Additional query words: Convoy 


Keywords          : 
Version           : winnt:4.0
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: February 18, 1999