Re: Multi-homed MSCS servers

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

"Henry" <Henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9535D4B5-F43A-4649-9279-0B18CACA7ED6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Has anyone had a similar issue?

No, but only because I would have never done it like that.

I probably should have mentioned that 2 of the NIC's connect to VLAN's
that
contain high speed document imaging equipment that, considering their
speed
(1150 documents/minute with 6 images/document) could easily approach
saturaturation of a single NIC causing queries from other subnets to be
unacceptably slow.

Actually that won't happen. On a fully switched network the Switches create
a virtual circuit between the two communicating Hosts. You can only
saturate the virtual circuit,...it is impossible to saturate the subnet
unless you yank out all the Switches and replaced them with Hubs. Only
Broadcasts can saturate a fully switched subnet and their are no big amounts
of broadcasts happening here,...the type of technology you are describing
does not create them.

Now with VLANs you can shoot yourself in the foot if you ain't careful.
VLANs do *not* conserve your bandwith and may often destroy it if they
aren't handled correctly. VLANs are usually a mix of "virtual" and
"physical",...when it is "virtual", that is two or more subnets over the
same physical cable,...they destroy your bandwidth because the traffic of
more than one segment (including the associated broadcasts) are all pounding
on the same cable. But if you keep the "virtual" part of it within the
confines of the Switch itself, and then keep things "physically" separated
where they leave the Switch (meaning a port is never part of more than one
segment) then you will gain the normal benefits of IP Segmenting.

However even IP Segmenting (subnets) only saves bandwith with respect to
Broadcasts,..nothing else. The majority of saving bandwidth comes at Layer2
by using Switches instead of Hubs.

system. Other than that I was just looking for comments on if adding
multiple
cluster IP addresses to a muti-homed server was a resonable undertaking.

No. Multi-Homing does not "load balance" unless Nic Teaming is used and that
is not what this situation is. A single computer name can only be identified
by a single IP#. The same is true for the Cluster,...a Cluster "name" is
nothing more than a glorified computer name and follows the same principles.
The hosts communicating with using the cluster name do not "know" it is a
cluster name,...they "think" is is a machine name,..which is the whole point
of it.

The load balancing come from the Cluster itself, not multiple nics or
multiple IP#s.

5 machines in a Cluster = 5 nics and 5 processor sets.

The "load" is spread accross the 5,..that is where the benefit comes
from,...not from sticking extra nics in the machines. Doing so will either
do "nothing" or create a mess,...more often create a mess.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------


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