Setting up network load balancing windows 2003

If you select this option, Network Load Balancing converts the cluster network address into a multicast address when this is needed. The network adapter to which the Network Load Balancing driver is bound retains its original media access control address. Click to select the Allow remote control check box to turn on remote-control operations. Type the password in the Remote password and Confirm password boxes.

Microsoft recommends that you do not turn on remote control and instead use Network Load Balancing Manager or other remote management tools such as Windows Management Instrumentation WMI. Under Initial host state , specify the host state with regard to the Network Load Balancing cluster when Windows is started.

You cannot use Network Load Balancing Manager on this computer to configure and manage other hosts because a single network adapter in Unicast mode cannot have intra-host communication. However, you can communicate with computers that are outside the cluster. To make sure that Network Load Balancing Manager is displaying the most recent host information, right-click the cluster, and then click Refresh. You must do so because the host properties that Network Load Balancing Manager displays are a copy of the host properties that were configured the last time Network Load Balancing Manager connected to that host.

When you click Refresh, Network Load Balancing Manager reconnects to the cluster and displays updated information. However, Network Load Balancing Manager is the preferred method. If you use the Network Connections tool, you must make the same configuration changes on every cluster host. The parameters that are set in the Network Load Balancing Properties dialog box are recorded in the registry on each host.

Clicking OK stops Network Load Balancing if it is running , reloads the parameters, and then restarts cluster operations. Without a complete understanding of the topics that are addressed in this section, you cannot properly configure port rules. Configuring port rules includes the creation, editing, and removal of port rules. To create port rules:. Type values for the Port range , Protocols, Filtering mode , Affinity, Load weight , and Handling priority boxes by using information from the installation check list.

In the list of rules, double-click the rule to display the rule's parameters in the Configuration area above the list of rules. Modify the Port range , Protocols, and Filtering mode parameters as necessary. You can make sure of this by using Network Load Balancing Manager to configure port rules see the second note below.

If you are using Network Load Balancing Manager, when you add additional hosts, they automatically inherit the cluster port rules from the initial host. If a host tries to join the cluster with a different number of rules, or with different rules from the other hosts, it is not accepted as part of the cluster. The rest of the cluster then continues to handle the traffic as before.

At the same time, a message is entered into the Windows event log. When this occurs, see the Event log to determine which host is in conflict with the other cluster hosts, resolve the conflict, and then restart Network Load Balancing on that host. Network load balancing is an excellent feature of the Microsoft Server Family operating systems. It allows the setup to make use of a single IP address to balance the load between two or more machine.

The following diagram will make things clear. The first step is to ensure IIS is setup and running on both the windows servers. Click OK then Next. Type the following html code into that file. Do the same in your second server also but while creating the default. Test whether both the IIS servers are functioning properly.

It looks like host 2 isn't doing anything. The cause of the problem turned out to be that I was creating the NLB cluster using unicast mode, which has compatibility problems with VMware's virtualised network plumbing. When I re-created the cluster using multicast then it worked correctly. Microsoft's documentation suggests that using unicast is the simplest option because it requires no router configuration changes.

This is not true under VMware, which will require some network configuration changes. Multicast mode seems to just work. Microsoft NLB not working properly in Unicast Mode - describes why unicast doesn't easily work under VMware, and what to do if you really want to use it anyway. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Network Load Balancing problem Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 7 months ago. Active 10 years, 7 months ago. Viewed 3k times. Summary I have two machines in an NLB cluster. None You want to ensure even load balancing among cluster hosts Client traffic is stateless for example, HTTP traffic. Single You want to ensure that requests from a specific client IP address are sent to the same cluster host. Clients use multiple proxy servers to access the cluster, and they appear to have multiple IP addresses within the same Class C IP address range.

All Rights Reserved. Mar Server 1. Server 2. The cluster adapters for all cluster hosts are assigned a multicast MAC address. Communication between cluster hosts is not affected, because each cluster host retains a unique MAC address.