Enabling Two Static IP's on a Server 2K3

[supersd]

Hello Tek Solvers i need your help.. I have a Server with 5 Builtin NIC. Well actually, 1 is embedded and rest are separate cards. Anyways, here's a problem. My server works perfectly with only one enabled NIC and staticaly assigned IP. Now, I enabled another NIC and assigned a static IP address on the same VLAN but on a separate ROUTER. The main reason i set it up this way incase one router goes down atleast one is still up. but the problem is it didnt work no one can access the server database when i disabled the 2nd NIC it works fine.. Is there any command or any that i can configure to make both NIC works because my goal is activate atleast 3-4 nic card but if i cant get it to work why would they install 6 NIC card on a server.. Pls Help let me know if you have another ways to do this... Aloha!

 

[kmills]

Supersd,

You can only have one gateway defined with Windows. So, if you are trying to use two different gateways, it will not work.

Hope this helps.

Kmills

 

[supersd]

Thanks Kmills,

What about adding route though, would this work?.. just a tought..

 

[gdvissch]

adding a route does not solve this issue :-(

the problem is that when you have two NICS in the same subnet, they must be in the sam VLAN.
Imagine what happens with an outgoing packet. How can the Server know to which NIC it must send the response packet of an incomming request? Both NIC are in the sam subnet, but maybe host 192.168.1.5 is on the first one and 192.168.1.6 on the second one.
You might think that a packet always takes the same NIC out as the one it came in through, bit this is not true. (some registry settings allow to change this behaviour, but last time I looked, outgoing packet left the interfaces in a round robin way, for load balancing, however in W2K3 I don't know hte default behaviour)
Also the problem could come from the routers, how are they talking to eachother?
You can use NIC teaming if you want a redundant setup on the server (when one NIC fails, the other keeps on going, both NICS have the same IP in that case)
On the router site you have protocols like HSRP (Hot Standbay Router Protocol" In this case your default gateway is a virtual IP defined on both routers. When one of them fails, the other takes over...
CU
G.