2008 R2 Cluster - Number of NICs

[mbyrew]

I've discovered that I need to setup a 2008 R2 Cluster to provide access to iSCSI SAN storage and Volunes (LUNS) for hosting .vhd files for VM's created on HYPER-V resulting in high availability and live migration etc. My current configuration is 2 x DELL R410 servers with 2 (two) NICs. These are configured with one for Network Data traffic and the other for the iSCSI LAN.

Do I need a third for the Heartbeat or can the Network NIC be used for this purpose.

[SYNACK]

With 2008 you should be fine using the same public NIC for both traffic and heartbeat Microsoft: Windows Server 2008 - Thoughts about running heartbeat and data over NIC team?
Configure two nics for heartbeat/Failover Cluster

[benIT]

we currently have 2x Dell R710 Servers using Storage server 2008 on ISCSI.

Although you can run on only a couple of NICs, whilst you are in the "install process and mind of thinking" it really is worth getting the spec and setup future proof to save revisiting at later date when the server is live.

We purchased some quad NICs intel - they were about £270 ( i think) from ebuyer at the time which is not much for the return you will get.

Each server in our setup has the following... (4 o/b ports + add in card)

3x NIC Ports for VM Use only (servers traffic)
1x NIC Ports for Managment of HyperV Server
1x NIC Ports for Failover Cluster network
1x NIC Ports for Live Migration traffic
1x NIC Ports for ISCSI Lan1 (main)
1x NIC Ports for ISCSI Lan2 (resil)

Have a look on the Blogs - Learning Gateway User Group site at Alan Richards posts on Hyperv they really do cut through the trees to see the way forward!!

Hope this helps