Access Denied to a shared folder when 2nd NIC is enabled

[MedMutual]

Hello,

I am having a pretty strange issue with my 11d server (11d Rev. 6235 with SP3 and hotfix 35, 38, and 39 installed) when accessing a file server's shared drive.  I'm trying to browse the selections on a Windows 2003 Standard R2 server, and when I have a 2nd network connection enabled (going to be used for iSCSI), I get a message saying "Failed to access sharename".  When I disable that network connection, I get in just fine.

I've made sure that the second connection is configured so that it does not place it's IP address in DNS.  I've also disabled NetBIOS over TCP/IP on this connection as well.  For those of you who have used Ethereal/Wireshark, I've looked at the traffic, and it is just talking to the remote BE agent (port 10000) and nothing else.  There were no clear errors messages when looking at it on the packet level.

I can browse other resources (C:, Sys State, etc) but not shares when this interface is enabled.  I've also noticed this issue on another file server that has a network connection into my iSCSI VLAN.  This interface is configued for a different subnet than my production subnet, so routing shouldn't be an issue.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advanced! 

[Kevin_Cotreau]

This is more of Windows question, but the problem is that what you are doing is not recommend by Microsoft. When you have two network cards (multihomed) in one server, they should not be on the same internal network and may even cause loops. You will experience authentication problems and sometimes general slowdowns.

The second card should only be used on a second network, such as one for a heatbeat, or an external network (like in SBS where you use the ISA firewall).

Although you disabled DNS and NetBios, there is still broadcast traffic.

Go search the Microsoft Knowledgebase for "multihomed server 2003" and it will become obvious that they don't recommend it. There are titles like: "Slow Computer Browsing from Multihomed Clients", and "Active Directory communication fails on multihomed domain controllers". I have also been told this by Microsoft directly.

Also look at this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/191611

[Kevin_Cotreau]

Also, you might want to look at the Network Load Balancing (NLB) applet's help file. Also this document: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323437.

I think this is technically how this would be done. I have not really used this, so I am not sure if you can set it up with only one server and two NICs, but I can't see why not.

[MedMutual]

Kevin,

Thanks for your input.  Unfortunately, these network interfaces are not in the same network.  They are each in different VLANs, so broadcast traffic from each network is not visible to the other.  

Again, the problem only occurs when accessing the share via the BE selection GUI. 

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

[MedMutual]

For your reference, if you want to have multihomed network connections in the same subnet on a Windows machine, you must bridge the network interfaces together.  NLB should only be used with between different servers. 

[PC_2]

I'm doing much the same with a local private gigabit network just used for Bex, DFSR, etc and a public network for user/external access.

Just use a local hosts file on the media server to override DNS lookups for connections and specify the specific lan for each job. Ditto for each backed-up server to find the Bex server.

Only snag is all Bex activity is on that specific lan only.