Multihome routing configuration?

[scottholwerda]

If we have a NAS device that will be accessed by several subnets, but most high bandwidth requests come from two subnets. If we multi-home the NAS and place one NIC in each high bandwidth subnets and want a single hostname entry what is the best method for setting up the network.

Is there a way to create two DNS entries and weight one that will be returned dependant on the subnet of the requesting host? Or is it possible to route the request and have the NAS communicate through the least cost NIC and then have ongoing communication occur without being routed?

[noran01]

If you place a nic in each of the high bandwidth subnets it will work if you have 2 dns entries for the NAS only if the 2 high bandwidth subnets are not routed (by which i mean cannot talk to one another;no trunking). Otherwise I would still do the multihoning and just have 2 different DNS names for each subnet. Something like hostname.subnet1.yourdomain.com and hostname.subnet2.yourdomain.com. That way each subnet is setup to use that certain interface (however users can choose to point to a different one therefore bypassing your 'load balancing'). If you choose to do it the first way mentioned just connect each interface from the NAS onto the switch (make sure to configure full duplex if they support it on both the card and the switch) to each of the different vlans.

You can also get a localdirector to do some kind of load balancning as well.

P.S. I do not believe there is a way to 'weight' DNS entries.

[scottholwerda]

I found the solution.

Windows 2000 DNS uses round robin and netmask routing. The netmask routing take priority and will return all matching DNS entries in order based upon matching subnet. By default the closes subnet resolution will be used.

Thank you for your help.