Environment
Novell NetWare 6.5
Novell NetWare 5.1 Support Pack 4 (NW51SP4.EXE)
Situation
Resolution
First, in INETCFG under Bindings you will need to bind two boards to the same address. In the binding you will need to go to the Configure TCPIP/IP Bind Options, Expert TCPIP options, select YES for "Groupt interface for LB/FT", on ONE interface you must also select YES for "Set as Primary Interface", on all other cards with the same IP binding you will select NO.
Next, back at the main menu of INETCFG, select Protocols, TCPIP, Load Balancing, set that to enabled, also set Fault Tolerance to Enabled if you would like fault tolerance. You may also need to change the LB/FT group to enabled under the "Configure Individual Groups" for each of the interface groups that you would like to be load balanced, or fault tolerant.
The only other thing to do is make sure that the interfaces that
will be load balanced are plugged into the same switch (if the
switch has multiple blades, it doesn't matter what blade, just make
sure that it is in the same VLAN if that is setup) [Also note, the
interfaces CAN be plugged into different switches for further fault
tolerance, but this is supported by your switch manufacturer, not
by Novell, so if it doesn't work plugged into different switches,
plug it into the same switch, if that doesn't work, then that
problem is supported by Novell].
Additional information
Please note the even though these instructions are part of the
NetWare 6.x documentation, they also apply directly to NW5.1 with
SP4.
- Load sharing (no
load balancing):
- Load sharing with
load balancing:
- Fault
tolerance:
Note:
Novell's load balancing and fault tolerance is implemented purely at IP and ARP protocol level. It is completely transparent to switches and switches should not have multiple interfaces going to the same server configured as trunks or this will not work. The advantage of Novell's solution is that the different interfaces can be connected to different switches thus achieving further fault tolerance.
Additional Information
At the server console LOAD MONITOR !H | server parameters |
Communications | IP LOAD SHARING | set this to Off
Save settings and reboot the server. Make sure that LB is disabled
and FT is enabled. With the latest TCP modules this should work.
(at the time of writing this note (4 April 2005) this was
tcp659f.exe and was not tested with any other versions).
Formerly known as TID# 10072189