Load balancing : dual network cards on server 2003

Fr0dders · 7 Apr 2006 at 16:48

is it possible to team up a pair of network cards in server 2003 to load balance and increase the throughput

or would you only be able to have a "hot" spare so to speak ?

NathanE · 7 Apr 2006 at 19:49

With the right NIC hardware, yes. They will cost a couple hundred quid each though... Can't see the need for it personally. Much easier to just have a few inexpensive NICs and give each a seperate IP. Have your services bind to 0.0.0.0 and they'll be accessible via all the network interfaces.

Otacon · 7 Apr 2006 at 19:55

And of course, you need a high speed backbone to really make any use of it. (If you have two gigabit NICs then you need a backbone that can sustain twice that... no need for most scenarios).

Fr0dders · 9 Apr 2006 at 11:19

what im really after is an FTP server over a lan

but increasing the throughput beyond the 100mb/s ive got already.

as when every1 at the lan needs to download a 100mb patch, it can take ages as you can only fit reasonably 3 or 4 people on the FTP at once.

i was thinking adding another NIC would enable another 3 or 4 people to join as well.

not sure how i would achieve this

Sone · 9 Apr 2006 at 19:28

don't know much about it, but there must be someway to multicast it to multiple pc's

SourChipmunk · 9 Apr 2006 at 20:19

What kind of hardware are you using? I know both our HP (Compaq) server and our Dell servers have the software for teaming the adapters for either load-balancing or fail-on-fault.

Otacon · 9 Apr 2006 at 20:20

If a machine is talking to more than one machine it's (probably) multicasting

Sounds like you need some gigabit hardware dude.

n3vrmind · 10 Apr 2006 at 01:34

multicasting probably wouldnt help, if you have 5 pcs with 100mbit connections downloading from your 1 machine then multicasting would just flood them all, its only really usefull if your sending the same information to all of them

WLBS wont help you much in this case either, its not designed with file sharing in mind, more for things like web hits and terminal services connections

what you need really is a gbit nic and switch, each client can saturate their own 100mbit nic but all of them in total wouldnt saturate yours

id give up on the multiple nics idea, unless your prepared to buy expensive hp or dell ones your not likely to find teaming software that can turn them into one virtual nic that has the combined capacity of both,

gbit is cheaper and worth it, windows file sharing over it can be as quick as having the drives in the same machine if you have it on both