WHS/2003 Server NIC Issue

[hucker]

I'm new to any of the MS server products so this might be obvious but I couldn't find the right search in google to figure this out.

I have 2 NIC's in my server. Everything seems to work just fine. Then I figure out that an old piece of hardware/software really wants the server's first network card to be the one it is looking for. By luck of course it is number 2.

So I do the obvious, reach on the back of the machine swap the cables and reboot for good measure. No dice, the network dialog shows packets going out but none coming back. Cycle power on the firewall (sonicwall) and the switch. No dice... how can this be?

Swap the cables back and everything works (except my old hardware/software) without a reboot. Huh?

I figured out that I can change the binding order but for the life of me I don't get why the cable swap doesn't work. I 'know' that on XP pro with dual nic's I've done the swap...

What gives?

 

[fcwilt]

Need more information, like what TCP/IP settings does Windows report for the NICs?

 

[pete_c]

Static assign an ip to the interface. Turn on and off your switch. Do a "repair" on the interface. I've seen similar issues.

 

[IamTed]

I do know when I was having a problem with WHS, it was pointed out to me in the WHS forum, that WHS does not support having more than one NIC.

 

[hucker]

I do know when I was having a problem with WHS, it was pointed out to me in the WHS forum, that WHS does not support having more than one NIC.

Hmmm, that isn't good. Just did a bunch of googling and you are right. I have found a few people doing what I'm doing without problems...

I have two NIC's on the mobo and WHS has found them without issue. I have clients off of both cards that can get on the WHS and seem to work fine insofar as they see the network shares and have been able to do client backups.

For me this would sort of be a deal killer for whs since I have two subnets that can't see each other for security reasons. The WHS is the only link between the two...

 

[IamTed]

What about running multiple IPs on the one NIC?

The server that used to setup WHS on was a recycled Dell that had the NIC on board and a dual Gigabite Intel NIC as well, so I figured that I would use the on board for the IP to come in with RDC and the other two would make a great piple line up to my Gigabit switch to feed the multimedia to the rest of the house. (Even thou I couldn't bind them together) but I wound up taking the dual NIC out. In my case, it hasn't lead to any bottle necks so far.

 

[pete_c]

Just a guess relating to you wanting to put your WHS box in a DMZ...but maybe you can NAT one IP to the other.

Your primary IP would be one subnet one nic. The other NIC/IP would be NAT'd over to the primary IP. The two networks wouldn't see each other setting the appropriate TCP/UDP in/out ports but would see the WHS Stuff.