Why has our new server got two network ports

[speckytecky]

It's probably hugely obvious to almost everyone else but why has our new server got two network ports. Apologies in advance to all those who see this as a stupid question:mullet:

[Domino]

for port teaming or load balancing.

 

Port teamings worth looking at, if you have switches which can support it

[Lee_K_81]

if you think of a server as a room and each network port as a door then imagine that 100s or 1000s of people want to get in and out. More doors = faster people can get in and out.

 

Can also be used for port teaming as domino suggested (although i'm not sure it has to be supported by switches depending on manufacturer of the nic), or if you use MS network load balancing you can have several servers listening on one IP which is assigned to one port on each server, they then use the other nic to communicate with each other and the network.

[mullet_man]

Our two admin servers both have two network ports teamed, am assuming it helps esp in the mornings when SIMs gets 40-50 logon requests.

[RabbieBurns]

Not much use if its a windows server, but I found this article an interesting read

 

Linux.com :: What can you do with a second Ethernet port?

[Andie]

It's probably hugely obvious to almost everyone else but why has our new server got two network ports. Apologies in advance to all those who see this as a stupid question:mullet:

 

I didn't know, and now I have learnt something. Thanks for asking!

[joe90bass]

There's no such thing as a stupid quesiton, only a stupid answer

 

I have our two file server NICs teamed, I assumed that that gives us doubel the bandwidth, but I've never looked into it!

 

Again, thanks for asking the question, I'm sure plenty others have learnt something to!

[srochford]

Not much use if its a windows server, but I found this article an interesting read

 

Why? As others have said, you can use it for teaming, clustering, load balancing.

 

You can use it when you just want the machine to be on 2 networks - eg a proxy server or other firewall type device.

 

Ultimately, I suspect most server motherboards (and many desktop boards) come with 2 network connections because it's very cheap to do it and it can be useful to have it.

[RabbieBurns]

Why what?

 

Why did I find it an intersting read?

 

or why is an article about linux configurations not much use for windows servers?

 

[Domino]

i think there's confusion there, sroachford obviously thought you meant

 

"two network ports aren't much good for windows servers"

 

when you meant

"this article is about linux.."

 

[dave.81]

I'll be setting up port teaming on all our servers during the summer. Seems a very useful idea to me

[SteveBentley]

Back in the good old days (!) it was common to use servers as routers. Our Netware servers had about 4 network cards - on 10-Base-2 with BNC connectors. One NIC handled the incoming network uplink, and the others had long chains of PCs hanging off them.

[Lee_K_81]

i think there's confusion there, sroachford obviously thought you meant

 

"two network ports aren't much good for windows servers"

 

when you meant

"this article is about linux.."

 

 

I thought the same. It did sound like you were saying that dual ports weren't much use in windows RabbieBurns, rather than that the article isnt much use for his current situation. lol

[speckytecky]

Thanks folks for all the prompt and informative answers.

 

This is one heck of a great learning resource!

[mattx]

Back in the good old days (!) it was common to use servers as routers.:

 

Lordy, brings back memories of building servers with two token ring cards in - and sometimes different servers for different protocol types !! One for IP and another for NetBUI - those were the days.....

[FN-GM]

If you team the two ports and plug each port into a different switch it will give you abit of redundancy incase one switch dies, you another to fall back on.

[maniac]

Our storage server is a bit overkill, we have 4 HP network cards teamed in it, until recently it was just 2. It does have storage for all our users doucments, and all the shared areas on it, so the extra bandwidth can't do it any harm.

 

The HP network teaming tool is very good, most manufacturers also to their own variations so it's worth looking for them if they exist for your network cards, rather than using the built in Windows options in my opinion.

 

Mike.

[K.C.Leblanc]

Just check that they are both network cards. Some servers (most of our HPs) have an additional managment port that connects to a web server built into the motherboard, lets you do hard reboots etc. remotely.

[AndyD]

On our server, we have 1 network port for external (Internet) traffic and the other for internal (network) traffic.

[maniac]

Just check that they are both network cards. Some servers (most of our HPs) have an additional managment port that connects to a web server built into the motherboard, lets you do hard reboots etc. remotely.

 

Goold old ILO on the HP servers has saved me a fair few times when I've accidently gone to shutdown insted of restart when working on a server remotely. I just wish you didn't have to purchase a licence to get the full functionality Still just the ability to operate the power button remotely is a real bonus!

 

Mike.

[srochford]

i think there's confusion there, srochford obviously thought you meant

 

"two network ports aren't much good for windows servers"

 

when you meant

"this article is about linux.."

 

 

Indeed - that'll teach me to read things too quickly :-)

[torledo]

Goold old ILO on the HP servers has saved me a fair few times when I've accidently gone to shutdown insted of restart when working on a server remotely. I just wish you didn't have to purchase a licence to get the full functionality Still just the ability to operate the power button remotely is a real bonus!

 

Mike.

 

yeah, i only discovered that the other day...iLO advanced for proliant servers.

IBM make a point about users not having to license for advanced LOM features, but then you have to order a RSA II slimline card to get a fully featured LOM experience on some ibm servers, so IBM charge for it in hardware and HP charge for it in feature activation - not much difference really. The only ones that don't add an iLO 'tax' for full functionality are Sun, and those who've used the iLO on Sun X4x00's say it's the best LOM implementation out of all the vendors. I've only used DRAC so i can't comment.

 

Normally the BMC/iLO port is clearly defined, on Dell servers it's a little spanner icon if you've order the option the DRAC option, suns standar ELO port on it's X2x00's just says 'net mgmt'

 

out of interest what feature(s) did you require of the iLO advanced that weren't available with the standard iLO on the proliant ? Surely the standard iLO let's you do basic stuff like remote power on.

[ahuxham]

On a linux machine, specifically Squid Proxy.

 

 

Two is ideal, one for inbound/outbound traffic from lan, and the other for inbound/outbound traffic from the Internet.

 

 

So the internet is theoretically never connected to the lan. The middle man and IPtables tell it what to-do with certain traffic. Good for a easy "load balance"

[Dos_Box]

I use one for the LAN and one for the iSCSI SAN per server. 2 Ports good.

[maniac]

out of interest what feature(s) did you require of the iLO advanced that weren't available with the standard iLO on the proliant ? Surely the standard iLO let's you do basic stuff like remote power on.

 

 

I don't really need the extra functionality, the only bit I really use is the powerbutton control, but the full console control of the machine from within iLO would be handy. However terminal services will suffice for my needs as it's not worth the extra expence for the number of times it is likely to be used.

 

Mike.