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Static ARP entry for NLB cluster when the clustered servers are Hyper-V virtual machines

I've found a lot of documentation about setting up static ARP entries on Cisco gear when you need to allow access to a Windows NLB cluster.

Does anyone know how to set that up when the clustered machines are virtual machines?

kevinhsieh

When I use NLB for my Windows 2008 R2 VMs under Hyper-V, I don't set static ARP entries. I have two synthetic NICs on the VMs; 1 for VM communication and the other the handling traffic to the cluster. I use NLB in unicast mode. You will need to enable MAC spoofing for the VM in Hyper-V or the cluster won't converge.

http://robwhitehouse.com/virtualisation/enable-nlb-in-a-hyper-v-guest/

Aaron_Denton

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kevinhsieah

thanks for the response. I created my NLB in unicast mode. When i checked the MAC address it was already set to Static and each node had the correct MAC address.

That seems to be working. I'm able to make connections from my internal network.

However; when I try to access through my Cisco firewall i'm unable to connect.

Should I add a static ARP entry to the Cisco box?

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kevinhsieh

You can check that ARP entry value on your firewall, but I doubt that is the problem. I use dynamic MAC addresses and I don't do anything special on my ASA firewall. I just do the standard static NAT for the cluster IP address and access list rules.

Aaron_Denton

ASKER

thanks for the responses guys! I'll try adding the static ARP on the switches that would carry that traffic sometime this week.

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kevinhsieh

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Aaron_Denton

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thanks guys for the help. I got this working without any static ARP.
I believe I just needed to use unicast mode.