can we connect single server to the multiple switches?

[darkdesire.cisco]

Hello Team,

I want to redesign the Client network in order to provide network availability and fail over. I have designed attached diagram. I have doubt if we can connect a server having multiple NICs to different uplink switches.

let say NIC1-2 is connected to Uplink Switch1 and NIC3-4 is connected to uplink Switch2. I want to do this so that if uplink switch1 dies then still server would be accessible via switch2.

is there would be any problem like mac address flapping? also, I know we can configure NIC teaming but i am not too sure how that would be helpful with my attached setup.

can you guys please look at the attached diagram and provide me your inputs?

Thanks for response.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

It depends on what the server's multiple interfaces support.

[devils_advocate]

The answer is that yes, it can be done but it depends on your existing network setup and what type of server you are using.

Have a read of the following documents:

http://www.hp.com/sbso/bus_protect/teaming.pdf

http://blogs.technet.com/b/privatecloud/archive/2012/06/19/nic-teaming-in-windows-server-2012-brings-simple-affordable-traffic-reliability-and-load-balancing-to-your-cloud-workloads.aspx

I believe that modern NIC teaming allows a bonded group to be split across non stacked switch members, have a Single Layer 3 address but separate MAC addresses to ensure one L2 address does not flap between switches.