2 NICS are better than 1

Lee H

Hi

Or is it, under what circumstances would you bring in the second NIC.

In our building we have 2 gig NICS but only 1 is being used, logic tells me this could be shared


Any info please

Thanks in advance

Lee H

NinjaBoy

For load balancing, fault tolerance and/or speed. All our main servers have two NIC's teamed up, when it comes to teaming them up you can choose for speed or for fault tolerance. We use fault tolerance

-ken

Mishra

Load balancing is the best method for NICs. It is all usually called NIC teaming.


If you thought of this on your own then good job.

ajs1976

Are you talking about two nics in a server or a switch?

If it is in a server, there is usually a utility included with the nic drivers to setup the team.

Lee H

Yes this is a server that has 2 NIC's but only one is being used

Can anyone think of an explination as to why it has set up like this, the spare NIC has even been disabled.


Lee H

Pash

Lee H wrote:

Yes this is a server that has 2 NIC's but only one is being used

Can anyone think of an explination as to why it has set up like this, the spare NIC has even been disabled.


Lee H

Hi Lee,

What brand of server is it and what OS?

On most servers you create a binded/team interface where if one interface fails the other takes over. The preference to which is the default interface is usually decided with the binding program/software you use. I know you can do a BIND in linux fairly easily on most versions of it.

sprkymrk

Pash wrote:

Lee H wrote:

Yes this is a server that has 2 NIC's but only one is being used

Can anyone think of an explination as to why it has set up like this, the spare NIC has even been disabled.


Lee H

Hi Lee,

What brand of server is it and what OS?

On most servers you create a binded/team interface where if one interface fails the other takes over. The preference to which is the default interface is usually decided with the binding program/software you use. I know you can do a BIND in linux fairly easily on most versions of it.

Another reason would be for an administrative interface to handle stuff like backups or remote desktop. You create a VLAN for the administrative network and bind one interface to that.

Pash

sprkymrk wrote:

Pash wrote:

Lee H wrote:

Yes this is a server that has 2 NIC's but only one is being used

Can anyone think of an explination as to why it has set up like this, the spare NIC has even been disabled.


Lee H

Hi Lee,

What brand of server is it and what OS?

On most servers you create a binded/team interface where if one interface fails the other takes over. The preference to which is the default interface is usually decided with the binding program/software you use. I know you can do a BIND in linux fairly easily on most versions of it.

Another reason would be for an administrative interface to handle stuff like backups or remote desktop. You create a VLAN for the administrative network and bind one interface to that.

Aye mark you can. But i think many servers come with ILO ports now so you can just use for redundancy rather than administration.

paintb4707

NinjaBoy wrote:

For load balancing, fault tolerance and/or speed. All our main servers have two NIC's teamed up, when it comes to teaming them up you can choose for speed or for fault tolerance. We use fault tolerance

-ken

How does two nics increase speed? I thought only one at a time can be used for transmission.

Darthn3ss

how can you set up load balancing with 2 nics on XP? is it possible?

Lee H

[/quote]

How does two nics increase speed? I thought only one at a time can be used for transmission.

[/quote]


I know very little about this topic but i do know that when you use 2 NICS you have them plugged into 2 seperate ports on the switch, this gives you 2 GIG of traffic coming in and out of the server at any 1 time as oppose to 1 GIG using 1 NIC



Lee H

dgbarr

half duplex over full duplex?

taktsoi

Lee H wrote:

How does two nics increase speed? I thought only one at a time can be used for transmission.
I know very little about this topic but i do know that when you use 2 NICS you have them plugged into 2 seperate ports on the switch, this gives you 2 GIG of traffic coming in and out of the server at any 1 time as oppose to 1 GIG using 1 NIC
Lee H

The technology is called " NIC Teaming"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

Basically, you could have 2 NICs or more and teamed up as NIC teaming. The way you setup as nic teaming will either increase bandwidth or provide fault tolerence. However, the NICs and switch must be supported.

For example, I have 8 Intel Servers NICs installed as a team. They are all piped together. So with 8 NICS teaming, I will have 8 x NICS bandwidth. and Should 1 be down, the 7 NICS remain and still provide the services.

This is an Intel 's documentation about NIC teaming.
http://www.intel.com/network/connectivity/resources/doc_library/tech_brief/maximizing_gig.pdf

Lee H

Hi Guys

Here is the response from the main IT department regarding only 1 NIC being enabled

---

Its not our normal standards to have two NIC's switchwed on. There are times when this is necesssary i.e. for Network Load Balancing and when two different networks want to connect to the same server e.g. Public and Ourcheshire. Effectively, trying to increase bandwidth by having two cards for what would be essentially the same purpose is not the answer. The main reason for having a second card is failover, if the active NIC fails we can invoke the second one

---

Hhhmmm, something tells me he has no balls to just come out with the real answer which is, "My boss wont allow it"

Corporate standards leave a lot to be desired

Lee H

dtlokee

Depending on the server and it's hardware, using a second gigabit NIC for additional speed is a waste of time. Lots of server hardware can't push 1Gb/s of data, so using a second NIC would be mostly for failover in case the first one fails, or to seperate the management/backup plane from the user data plane.

my $0.02

Lee H

Both servers are Dell Poweredge 2850, one has 2 GIG of ram the other has 4 GIG of ram, would these be good enough to push more than 1Gd/s of data


can the other NIC be configured so it comes into use when other fails?



Lee H

Pash

Lee H wrote:

Both servers are Dell Poweredge 2850, one has 2 GIG of ram the other has 4 GIG of ram, would these be good enough to push more than 1Gd/s of data


can the other NIC be configured so it comes into use when other fails?



Lee H

Maybe so if Dell have a teaming/binding software available to do this. I love Hp's one click and done teaming