Dedicate a network interface for client access in windows failover cluster manager

Question

Hello All,

In a windows 2019 Cluster with 2 nodes, each node having 2 network interfaces, to dedicate a network interface for smb/nfs traffic alsone, i understand that we need to set the cluster role or cluster+client role or none to an interface.

With multiple interfaces configured with same subnet, then say network1 is configured with cluster and network2 with cluster+client, as part of fileserver role creation
Add-ClusterFileServerRole is not assigning the static ip to the network2.

Wondering is there a way i can configure the client network for the interfaces coming from same subnet. In this example, whichever interface is configured for cluster+client, it should assign the IP of the fileserver role,

Thanks in advance for your time!

Answer 1

Hi,

Thank you for posting the question to Q&A forum.

Please kindly check below comments on your question.

1. From network side, if you have two interfaces configured with same subnet on any node, only one adapter may communicate on the network at a time in the Ethernet network topology. Therefore, both adapters cannot be transmitting at the same time and must wait if another device on the network is transmitting.
   For your reference:
   How multiple adapters on the same network are expected to behave
2. From cluster side, since there is only one adapter working on the network at a time, there will be only one cluster network displayed. Also, above article mentioned "Windows Server Failover Clustering does not use additional adapters on the same network and relies on existing features of the TCP/IP protocol."

In Summary, it seems not possible to configure different network types for each interface coming from the same subnet. So, we suggest that you should configure the network adapters to be on different logical subnets.

Thanks,

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Answer 2

Thank you so much for the quick response. It really helped.