Microsoft NLB with Cisco 6500

[stevecox]

We are attempting to get Microsoft's Network Load Balancer to work for our environment. I have read http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/products_configuration_example09186a0080a07203.shtml, but our environment differs in a couple of ways.

1. In the document the NLB and servers appear to be on separate physical servers. In our environment the NLB and both servers reside on a single Hyper-V host.
2. In the document the NLB is on a different Vlan than the servers. In our environment the NLB and both servers are on the same Vlan and in fact utilize the same interface from the Hyper-V host to the switch.
3. The example in the document uses the static mac-address command mac-address-table static 0300.5e11.1111 vlan 200

The show ip arp command produces:

Protocol  Address          Age (min)  Hardware Addr   Type   Interface

Internet  10.3.31.239             -         03bf.0a03.1fef   ARPA

The show mac-address address command produces:

  vlan   mac address     type    learn     age              ports

------+----------------+--------+-----+----------+--------------------------

Supervisor:

*   16  03bf.0a03.1fef    static  No           -   Gi13/15

Supervisor:

*   16  03bf.0a03.1fef    static  No           -   Gi13/15

We can not communicate with the server outside of the Vlan it is configured for. Anyone with an idea?

[stevecox]

#3 somehow got truncated. It should have read > "The example in the document uses the static mac-address command

mac-address-table static 0300.5e11.1111 vlan 200 interface fa2/3 fa2/4 disable-snooping. When I used the disable-snooping option it took the command but when I did a show run disable-snooping was not in the configuration."

[Leo Laohoo]

Hi Steve,

I presume you haven't come across a this little MS document.  Basically, this document is the "best practice" in using MS NLB solution:  DON'T

[stevecox]

This was found to be a server side configuration error by our server group. Thanks.