Well, you can look at NLB at both load balancing AND fault tolerance. NLB
stands for "Network Load Balancing" so yeah, it load balances =)
NLB can be seen as fault tolerant because you're talking about having
multiple servers doing the exact same job, i.e. hosting the same web site.
If you have two machines in NLB and one dies, the web site stays up because
the other site just takes over all of the work. You can add up to 32 servers
to a NLB cluster, so you can get superb fault tolerance and load balancing
out of NLB.
NLB is a type of clustering. You should do a bit of reading on clustering
technology also.
NIC teaming is fault tolerance, also. You take two NICs and they get tied
to a virtual NIC. The virtual NIC is where you set all of your TCP/IP
information. When the primary/active NIC dies, the failover NIC takes over
and you barely lose a step. That would be fail on fault teaming.
To answer your questions:
a. NLB I don't believe can be used to do throughput. There are ways to do
teaming to increase throughput. You can also do load balancing on a team of
NICs, which increases throughput to the server. But, if that server dies,
it's a single point of failure, meaning your network resource (wep page,
whatever) is toast. This is why if you need fault tolerance, do a cluster or
NLB setup.
b. Nope. We use it just fine. If you NLB, the DC's will get the DNS
registration of each node's name/IP just as normal. I'm blanking here, but I
THINK Windows NLB services register the A record of the virtual server for
you automatically. Your clients would do the lookup of the virtual server,
the traffic comes to the cluster, and it is balanced across your 2-32 nodes
in the NLB cluster.
Now if you're talking doing NLB for your Domain Controller services, there
is no need. Fire up a second Domain Controller in the domain and you're set.
If you're talking teaming the NICs on a DC, it's perfectly fine. We do it.
c. I don't think this is advisable by MS, but I may be wrong. It's also
bordering on overkill if you think about it!
"Danno" wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am becoming more involved in windows networking vs. application
> specific management (e.g. Exchange)
>
> I previously thought NLB and Network Adapter teaming were the same
> thing.
>
> >From reading on this, I am gathering that NLB is used for load
> balancing and network teaming is used for fault tolerance. Is this
> correct?
>
> Here are some additional areas that are not clear to me yet:
>
> a. Is there a way to use either of these features to increase the
> throughput of data for a particular server (e.g. Backup Server or Web
> server)
>
> b. Does network teaming or NLB'ing cause problems for DC's?
>
> c. is it possible to attempt to enable NLB on a network team and cause
> problems?
>
> I know this will all make sense soon.
>
>
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