Installation guide

C H A P T E R 1 0 Configuration for Clustering
351
Network Load Balancing
What Is Network Load Balancing?
Network Load Balancing is a Windows 2000 Advanced Server feature. By using
Network Load Balancing to build a server cluster, you can enhance the availability of
Internet server programs, such as those used on Web, proxy, domain name service
(DNS), FTP, virtual private network (VPN) and streaming media servers. Network Load
Balancing can help you scale your server’s performance.
NLB can be used in unicast or multicast modes. If the cluster is operating in unicast
mode (the default), ordinary network communication among cluster hosts is not
possible unless each cluster host has at least two network adapters.
Creating Multinode Network Load Balancing Clusters on ESX
Server
This section covers procedures for creating a Network Load Balancing cluster using
nodes running in virtual machines. These virtual machines can be located on one or
more ESX Server machines.
Creating the First Node’s Base Virtual Machine
1. Access the VMware Management Interface at https://<hostname>/ and
log on as the user who will own the virtual machine.
2. Click Add Virtual Machine.
3. Keep the default Guest Operating System selection of Microsoft Windows
2000 Server.
Note: This example uses Microsoft Windows 2000 Server as the guest operating
system. You may substitute another Windows operating system that supports
Microsoft Cluster Service.
4. Change the Display Name field to describe the virtual machine — for example,
MSCS Node 1 (Portsaid).
5. Change the Location of the virtual machine configuration file to
/home/<user>/vmware/cluster1/cluster1.vmx.
6. Click Next.
7. Choose the number of processors you want the guest operating system to use,
up to 2.