content switch and dual-homed servers

kentnoyes · ‎03-31-2003

Could you use a content switch to represent a single dual-home server so that if one of the NICs in the server would fail client connectivity to the same IP address could continue?

Gilles Dufour · ‎04-02-2003

It does not work 100% actually, because each NIC uses its own MAC address.

So, a gratuitous would be required to be sent by the server to infom the CSS to update is ARP table.

Today, the CSS accept the GARP, but it will not affect existing flows.

Only new flows will be redirected to the new NIC.

A feature request was open for this and we are still working on it.

Gilles.

kentnoyes · ‎04-02-2003

I don't think I worded the question properly. The server would actually have two NICs with different IP addresses on each NIC. I would like the content switch to pass traffic to one of these unique IP addresses unless it detected that it was no longer responding (via ICMP or whatever) - once the CSS detects a failure it would then pass traffic to the other NIC on that same server (the 2nd NIC using a different IP address than the address on the first). Would this work?

Gilles Dufour · ‎04-03-2003

In this case, you configure the 2 IP address as belonging to different servers.

So, you configure the first one as a normal server and the 2nd

one as a backup server.

But with this solution, you lose active connections.

Gilles.