Conference decwet::winnt-clusters

727.0. "dual NIC cards to client net" by STOSS1::SEITZ (A Smith & Wesson beats 4 Aces.) Fri Apr 04 1997 14:35

    Hi,
    
    Since an Ethernet card failure does not trigger a cluster failover
    my customer would like to configure dual NIC cards for client
    connections (3 NIC cards, 2 for clients - 1 for the cluster comm.)
    
    However, I don't understand this enough to explain exactly what would
    happen in the event of a failover.
    
    1) Is the IP service assigned 2 IP addresses within the cluster group?
    
    2) If that is yes then IP address 1 would be bound to NIC1 and IP
    address 2 would be bound to NIC2 within NT. But does the DNS entry have
    2 IP addresses for the same IP group alias?
    
    3) If 2 is yes, then how does it determine which to hand out to
    clients and is there any intelligence in handling this when one of the
    NIC cards, and therefore one of the IP addresses is gone?
    
    4) If 2 is no, then how does the client respond to a failure? Is it
    built in to something like the SQL client that there are multiple
    services to scroll down through?
    
    In either event would the client necessarily have to do a manual
    reconnect?
    
    If there is going to be a difference in how an IP based app like SQL
    Server handles this vs. the way file services will handle this (next
    SP?) I'd appreciate that info as well.
    
    Thanks,
    Pat