Setting up a new Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session Directo

[JK in Nebraska]

I am attempting to setup a Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session
Directory for load balancing. I have been looking through Microsofts TechNet
articles etc. but am not making much progress in getting things to work
properly. I'm sure I'm skipping a step or doing steps out of order. Does
anyone know of a single resource that goes through the whole process?

I have three new servers with Server 2003 Enterprise on each. All servers
have two NICs (all identical). All servers will be on the same subnet.

 

[Jeff]

This document helped me a lot. I will keep my notify on this open, I just
went through this in great detail and now mine works great. Especially when
you start using your RDP 6.0.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/sessiondirectory.mspx

"JK in Nebraska" wrote:

> I am attempting to setup a Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session
> Directory for load balancing. I have been looking through Microsofts TechNet
> articles etc. but am not making much progress in getting things to work
> properly. I'm sure I'm skipping a step or doing steps out of order. Does
> anyone know of a single resource that goes through the whole process?
>
> I have three new servers with Server 2003 Enterprise on each. All servers
> have two NICs (all identical). All servers will be on the same subnet.
>
>
>

 

[Jeff]

One stupid thing I didn't do I will always do...name your Network connections
before you begin. 1 NIC for LAN 1 NIC FOR NLB. When you use the nlbmgr
utility you will have to choose which NIC you will use for the NLB, naming
them makes it easier hehe

"JK in Nebraska" wrote:

> I am attempting to setup a Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session
> Directory for load balancing. I have been looking through Microsofts TechNet
> articles etc. but am not making much progress in getting things to work
> properly. I'm sure I'm skipping a step or doing steps out of order. Does
> anyone know of a single resource that goes through the whole process?
>
> I have three new servers with Server 2003 Enterprise on each. All servers
> have two NICs (all identical). All servers will be on the same subnet.
>
>
>

 

[JK in Nebraska]

RE: Setting up a new Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session Dir

I'm close but not quite making the connection. Here's my configuation for one
of the terminal servers. The others are similar.

Lan:
IP: 192.168.x.19
SN: 255.255.255.0
GW: 192.168.x.1
DNS: 102.168.x.5

NLB:
IP: 192.168.x.249
SN: 255.555.555.0

Session Directory Redirect: LAN

Are these settings correct?
Do I need Hosts tables to point to NLB NIC?

"Jeff" wrote:

> One stupid thing I didn't do I will always do...name your Network connections
> before you begin. 1 NIC for LAN 1 NIC FOR NLB. When you use the nlbmgr
> utility you will have to choose which NIC you will use for the NLB, naming
> them makes it easier hehe
>
> "JK in Nebraska" wrote:
>
> > I am attempting to setup a Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session
> > Directory for load balancing. I have been looking through Microsofts TechNet
> > articles etc. but am not making much progress in getting things to work
> > properly. I'm sure I'm skipping a step or doing steps out of order. Does
> > anyone know of a single resource that goes through the whole process?
> >
> > I have three new servers with Server 2003 Enterprise on each. All servers
> > have two NICs (all identical). All servers will be on the same subnet.
> >
> >
> >

 

[Jeff]

RE: Setting up a new Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session Dir

On your first node have IP for LAN and have an IP that you want your "farm"
name to use. ie: farm = tsfarm.ad.domain.com each node can be tsfarma,
tsfarmb, etc just to keep naming right.
1. Set LAN up and set NLB up on first node - make sure your network load
balancing is checked on the NLB network settings
2. You can use nlbmgr (recommended) or network settings to configure this
first node as part of the virtual cluster - the IP address of your NLB NIC
should be the virtual IP of the farm name.
3. On your second node the LAN should be unique, BUT make the NLB NIC the
same IP of the cluster IP (this is also the same IP as the NLB NIC on your
first node MAKE SURE network Load balancing is enabled before you apply the
settings).
4. use nlbmgr to add a member to the cluster, the nlbmgr will automatically
configure the second node to match the first node on cluster settings.

You continue to do this until all nodes (up to 32) are complete.

You should make sure you setup your session directory and terminal settings
in the OU that your terminal nodes are in. You also have to make sure you
manually add the terminal servers to the allowed list as described in that
document I had you download. Also make sure that on each node that your
Local Remote Desktop users group is listed in the actual listener in your
terminal server configuration - connections. I would also host your session
directory on a server that isn't a node in the farm. It can be a standard
2003 server (this server can't be a node but it can host the session
directory). Hope this helps

"JK in Nebraska" wrote:

> I'm close but not quite making the connection. Here's my configuation for one
> of the terminal servers. The others are similar.
>
> Lan:
> IP: 192.168.x.19
> SN: 255.255.255.0
> GW: 192.168.x.1
> DNS: 102.168.x.5
>
> NLB:
> IP: 192.168.x.249
> SN: 255.555.555.0
>
> Session Directory Redirect: LAN
>
> Are these settings correct?
> Do I need Hosts tables to point to NLB NIC?
>
> "Jeff" wrote:
>
> > One stupid thing I didn't do I will always do...name your Network connections
> > before you begin. 1 NIC for LAN 1 NIC FOR NLB. When you use the nlbmgr
> > utility you will have to choose which NIC you will use for the NLB, naming
> > them makes it easier hehe
> >
> > "JK in Nebraska" wrote:
> >
> > > I am attempting to setup a Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session
> > > Directory for load balancing. I have been looking through Microsofts TechNet
> > > articles etc. but am not making much progress in getting things to work
> > > properly. I'm sure I'm skipping a step or doing steps out of order. Does
> > > anyone know of a single resource that goes through the whole process?
> > >
> > > I have three new servers with Server 2003 Enterprise on each. All servers
> > > have two NICs (all identical). All servers will be on the same subnet.
> > >
> > >
> > >

 

[Jeff]

RE: Setting up a new Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session Dir

make sure your NLB NIC ip address is your cluster's virtual names IP address
since all NLB NICS on all nodes will have this same IP address. With NLB
enabled on all your NLB NIC's you won't get a duplicate IP address error.
You don't have to have a routing table. if you use nlbmgr to create the
cluster and add nodes to the cluster it will also create your DNS entry for
the virtual farm name and the virtual IP address of the farm.

"JK in Nebraska" wrote:

> I'm close but not quite making the connection. Here's my configuation for one
> of the terminal servers. The others are similar.
>
> Lan:
> IP: 192.168.x.19
> SN: 255.255.255.0
> GW: 192.168.x.1
> DNS: 102.168.x.5
>
> NLB:
> IP: 192.168.x.249
> SN: 255.555.555.0
>
> Session Directory Redirect: LAN
>
> Are these settings correct?
> Do I need Hosts tables to point to NLB NIC?
>
> "Jeff" wrote:
>
> > One stupid thing I didn't do I will always do...name your Network connections
> > before you begin. 1 NIC for LAN 1 NIC FOR NLB. When you use the nlbmgr
> > utility you will have to choose which NIC you will use for the NLB, naming
> > them makes it easier hehe
> >
> > "JK in Nebraska" wrote:
> >
> > > I am attempting to setup a Terminal Server farm with NLB and Session
> > > Directory for load balancing. I have been looking through Microsofts TechNet
> > > articles etc. but am not making much progress in getting things to work
> > > properly. I'm sure I'm skipping a step or doing steps out of order. Does
> > > anyone know of a single resource that goes through the whole process?
> > >
> > > I have three new servers with Server 2003 Enterprise on each. All servers
> > > have two NICs (all identical). All servers will be on the same subnet.
> > >
> > >
> > >