Simple question about dual NIC's

[scottew]

I have a Dell PowerEdge R610 which has dual NIC's. It's running Server 2008 R2 Standard and it's a DC and DNS server. The dual NIC's are not teamed.

So my question is whether there would be any benefit in hooking up both NIC's?

My answer would be No because I believe there is no benefit and may actually cause some DNS issues.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[NortonES2]

If you team the nics, you can increase the throughput but more importantly I think is that it protects you from losing the server if a nic fails. There shouldn't be any DNS issues if the team is correctly configured.

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If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[58sniper]

It's important to understand that your switches need to support it as well. Also, some applications shouldn't use teamed NICs. You should research accordingly if you're going to put other apps on the box.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[scottew]

Thank you for the responses. I understand that teaming them could provide some benefits.

I was wondering if there was any benefits of hooking up both NIC's without teaming them.

Current Configuration:

NIC1 has static IP address 192.168.10.5
NIC2 has is getting IP addres via DHCP.

We have been having a connectivity issue and I belive that this may part of the problem. One of my coworkers feels that this configuration would help provide throughput, etc.

My beleif is that it has absolutely no benefit since they are not teamed and is actually causing some DNS issues.

What do you guys think?

Thanks again for your responses.
Scott

 

[58sniper]

You should absolutely set NIC2 to not register in DNS.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[PScottC]

I would generally recommend against that configuration because windows does not like having more than one "Default Gateway". Unless your are building your windows box as a router, do not dual-home it. It is better to team the NICs and have a single IP presence on the network (even if you need multiple IPs on the NIC).

PSC
[—] CCNP (R&S/Wireless) [•] CCSP [•] MCITP: Enterprise Admin [•] MCSE [—]

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[NortonES2]

Disconnect NIC 2

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If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[kmcferrin]

There's not really any point in hooking up the second NIC if you aren't teaming it. You won't get better throughput unless other computers are communicating with the second NIC, which means that it will have to be registered with DNS. As Pat hinted, this will cause serious issues with your DC. Making sure that the NIC doesn't register with DNS will prevent those issues but also makes the second NIC pointless.

The only case where I think it would make sense is if you were routing or otherwise connecting to two separate networks. In that case you need to choose one NIC to hold the default gateway (whichever one holds all of your routable networks) and not specify the gateway on the second NIC (which would presumably be connected to a single, non-routed network or subnet). Using DHCP would not be recommended, as you could end up with a second gateway specified which could cause strange issues with your server appearing to "disappear" from the network.

________________________________________
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[58sniper]

The advantage to having another NIC, especially when it's not registered in DNS, is that you have a path to connect to the DC if the primary NIC is unavailable, or extremely congested. Teaming is ok if your infrastructure supports it, and the applications on the server support it.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/