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File Server in SMB VLAN Environment: IVR or Multiple NICs?

We have a small network with C2960S stack switches for the core, a few C2960G switches for end-point access and a 1921 router. We also have a VMWare ESXi server running our file server VM.

Is it better to have our file server have a vNIC on each subnet, or have users inter vlan route through the 1921 to the file server's vlan (vlan1)? I'm concerned about performance and the 1921 being a bottle neck. Our switches do not support L3 routing. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Robert

Mohammed Khawaja

Assign multiple NICs with one on each subnet. Just ensure to add default router IP only for one interface. Not only you get rid of traffic through the router but also each subnet will have a dedicated NIC and thus, you can sustain higher throughput providing you assign the virtual NICs to physical NICs on the host.

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Soulja

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Robert Davis

ASKER

Soulja, would that setup not be the same bottle neck, just switch on a stick? I'd need to replace all our core C2960S switches in order to benefit from the 3750's L3 capabilities no?

Thanks,
Robert

Robert Davis

ASKER

Also, if I put the file server in each vlan (via having one vNIC per vlan, mapped to one physical NIC per vlan), how should I configure DNS to hand out that subnet's respective address for the file server? In other words, if user is on vlan2 which is Dot2, how do I give out 2.10 for the user on vlan2 and 1.10 for the user on vlan1 as the response for the file servers name?