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amcasperforu's avatar
amcasperforu
Level 4
13 years ago

Veritas Cluster 5.1 for Windows - How many NICs should I have...

Hello, Our company would like to build a two node cluster in an active/passive. OS: Windows 2003 32-bit Clustering software: Symantec Veritas Cluster 5.1 for Windows SAN: HP MSA 2000 for SAS ...
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  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    13 years ago

    The minimum requirement is 2 NICs - in this case:

    One NIC is used as a dedicated VCS hearbeat

    The second NIC is used as your public network AND as a low priority VCS heartbeat - this means, all cluster communication is sent over the dedicated VCS hearbeat (cluster is very chatty), apart from a low frequency "I am alive" on the low priority heartbeat.  Should you loose the dedicated VCS hearbeat, then the low priority heartbeat will be promoted which will put additional traffic on the public network.

    The recommended numbers of NICs is 4:

    2 for your public network (usually in a "team")

    2 dedicated heartbeats

    and if the 2 public network heartbeats are completely independent of the 2 dedicated heartbeats, then you can make the public network a 3rd low pri heartbeat.

    All heartbeats, whether dedicated or low-pri, must be independent, so not share a dual or quad NIC card and go through separate switch and ideally separate VLANs.

    Mike