December 8, 2004 at 1:41 pm
First question:
Is it possible (or OK) to have 3 NIC (network interface cards) in a single SQL server machine A and connecting them to three different switches each belonging to different broadcast domain or network?
Objective is to reduce the network traffic. This way other SQL server machines B, C, and D , on those 3 networks can talk the first SQL server A via seperate paths. I am anticipating heavy network traffic during replication.
Second question:
Is there any way in the stored procedure to tell the SQL server which path to take to get out, if there are multiple NIC cards in a machine? This question is in the same network configuration as the first question, above. Depending on the task, I want to specify a specific nic card/path ( IP address) to send out query to other machine. Obvously, in this case there are more than one path between two sql Servers. Again, this is to manage the network traffic.
Munzer Haque
December 9, 2004 at 7:18 am
I don't think this is possible. SQL Server has the ability to listen on multiple ports, but I don't know of a way for it to listen on multiple IP addresses.
The second question is tied to the first. If the stored procedure is returning result sets to machines B, C, and D, the result sets would come back through the IP/Port from where the request came (the open connection from B, C, and D).
December 9, 2004 at 8:02 am
This solution may accomplish some of what you're looking for. It will be dependent partly on your NIC manufacturer, however: (The entire doc is at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/deploy/harag04.mspx):
To ensure that users can access the data center, use redundant network interface cards (NICs), and use NIC teaming to provide automatic failover between the NICs in the event of a failure. NIC teaming combines two or more physical NICs into a single logical NIC, which ensures that the data center always has an active link to the network. To use NIC teaming, connect each NIC card to a different switch on a different subnet. NIC teaming requires software from the NIC vendor, and each NIC is configured to use a common virtual IP address. When all NICs are working properly, their combined bandwidth is pooled for increased performance. When a teamed NIC begins to fail, the software stops using the failing NIC and routes all network communication over the remaining NIC or NICs. This failover process is transparent to the operating system and other devices on the network.
December 11, 2004 at 1:02 am
Depending on your bandwidth needs, this option might work.
Install a single fiber gigabit nic in your server and connect it to a gigabit switch with 10/100 ports. Connect the other server/domains to the 10/100 ports on the switch. This should remove any bottleneck at your server and simplify your administration. Since all of your connections are on different domains, there is no need to tell SQL which ip to use, when you open a connection, the routing table will direct it to the proper ip. Depending on how your networks are set up, you may have to build an lmhosts file on each of your servers if your plan to use server names to reference each other. Being on different domains can cause your name resolution to fail.
I recently gave up on attempting to maintain a multi-homed server. Among other issues, periodically one or the other nics would stop responding. I was able to overcome this problem by using the Routing and Remote Access service but... this adds some overhead to your network traffic and creates additional administration headaches.
Good luck
February 7, 2005 at 10:56 am
I was able to do this.
Have two cards with different IPs(each from seperate switches) and two DNS entires. One for Main server name point to first address and the other alias name point to other IP address. SQL server was able to listening on both IP addresses(You can find in ErrorLog).
THis would work for all incoming connections based on the connection strings you specify from the Applications.
Not sure how to send out going traffic through a specific IP.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
rb
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