Quick Server multiple Network Card Question ????

[burgemaster]

Hi all,

Just having a tidy up behind our server rack and have a question that I have always wondered about...

Our DC`s among other servers have 2 network sockets. Originally they were both connected up to the main switch with 1gbit connections...
They "were" assigned different IP addresses but if I remember there was always a warning about conflicting IPs and we ended up just running one 1gbit connection to each server.
Our mail server if i remember has 5 NICs !!!! ? At one point I teamed them all up but then went back to just one...

What is correct practise here please? What do you guys do?
Thanks in advance

[jamesreedersmith]

Teamed with failover generally.

[ChrisH]

I would usually team them or they have to be on different subnets. Watch your DNS registration as you may not want all of them to have a DNS entry, depending on your routing etc it could mess things up.

[burgemaster]

Thanks for replies,

So apart from redundancy on NIC failure, there are no performance benefits to having each NIC connected??
Cheers

[jamesreedersmith]

If you team them (and your switch supports it) you will get greater throughput.

[mthomas08]

Just adding that usually a server will rarely reach capacity even in the peak times on the Networking. I do not think I have ever seen one of our servers struggle on that level. I have occasionally though had to switch from one port to another on our older servers due to one port failing. Not on our newest ones though.

Also useful as a Bridge, we have one server with a NIC dedicated through a VLAN for an outside link through our service provider (bit complicated). That NIC is unreachable from internally, only the server it self can access it.

Usually it's HD's/Memories and rarely processors.

[Mcshammer_dj]

teamed and set to seprate switches to allow for increased levels of redunancy. this is linked with 2 power supplies per server and our computer room having 2 seperate ring mains. This means that even if an entire ring fails our servers will stay working