Server Load Balancing with Windows 2003

[markwoodward]

We have successfully configured and used SLB on 6800s connected to Linux/Red Hat systems for some time but are now (foolishly!!) migrating to Windows 2003 Server and we are having problems configuring the Windows 2003 parameters. We can create the two physical IP addresses and the single 'virtual' IP address but when we apply the virtual IP address to the second server Windows 2003 responds with "IP Clash".

Has anybody any experience of configuring Windows 2003 SLB with Alcatel AOS please ?

[markwoodward]

A reply to my own posting - for reference we have found a solution - don't configure anything on the Alcatel switches. Set the Windows 2003 for Multicast SLB and then configure the two physical IP addresses of the servers and the single virtual IP address on both servers - this seems to work. The important part is to set Multicast operation. The default is unicast and prevents configuration of the virtual address on the second server.

The SLB function is thus contained purely within the Windows 2003 environment.

I'm sure that there are other ways of doing this but this method works for us - - -