Welcome to ISAserver.org

ISA 2004 NLB Traffic handling

Users viewing this topic: none

Logged in as: Guest

Printable Version

All Forums >> [ISA Server 2004 Firewall] >> Network Infrastructure >> ISA 2004 NLB Traffic handling

Page: [1]

Message

<< Older Topic Newer Topic >>

ISA 2004 NLB Traffic handling - 24.Oct.2007 3:08:08 PM

mkguy

Posts: 13
Joined: 24.Oct.2007
From: Germany
Status: offline

Hi,

we are using a 2-node ISA 2004 Enterprise with ISA integrated NLB on Windows 2003 SP1 as proxy server and firewall. The webchaining is configured to redirect HTTP/S traffic to our viruswalls, upstreamserver1 (primary route) and upstreamserver2 (backup route). In order to achieve balacing for upstreamed traffic, we modified the local hosts file on both ISA servers to resolve the IP of these upstreamservers differently.

But unfortunately, it seems like this is not working well. We noticed on our first upstreamservers (served by ISA node 1) very high load, while our second upstreamserver (serverd by ISA node 2) had almost none at all. The same behaviour occurs on the second upstreamserver if we change the hosts file entry or use the backup upstream route.
Since this seems like only one ISA (the first, and therefore only one viruswall) node will be in charge of all HTTP/S traffic, it lead us to suspect the traffic handling of the NLB as the main culprit.
According to the following article, the decision is made based on the alphabetic order of all network adapter names on all nodes in the respective subnet. Is this the case in an NLB configuration? If so, it is an explanation for the load on the one upstreamserver. If not, uh...

Anyways, enlightenment on this �ssue in any way is very much appriciated.