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Thursday 23 September 2010

Want to Prioritise Windows NLB Traffic on Exchange 2010 or 2007 CAS Servers ?

Scenario
========

Multiple Exchange 2010 CAS Servers, Possible Mixture of Virtual and Physical configurations, or Lower and Higher Spec Servers.

Requirement
===========

You would like to ensure that most of the traffic is handled by the Higher spec or physical servers to utilise as much resource as possible.

Solution
========

Use Windows NLB LOAD WEIGHT Parameter
To prioritise traffic to the server with the Higher Load weight,



When using Multiple hosts filtering mode, this parameter specifies the relative amount of load-balanced network traffic that this host should handle for the associated port rule. Allowed values range from 0 (zero) to 100. To prevent a host from handling any network traffic, set the load weight to 0 (zero).

The actual fraction of traffic handled by each host is computed as the local load weight divided by the sum of all load weights across the cluster.

You can specify different load weights for each host in the cluster by using the Load weight parameter. You can specify that all hosts distribute the network load equally by using the Equal load distribution parameter instead of the Load weight parameter.

OK, But How do I know its doing whats its suppose to do ?
===============================================

Easy, and Very Accurate, Using good old Perfmon you can add the following counters to see how many
RPC Access Clients are connected (Outlook) and how many OWA Users are connected,
and you should see the load is spread as you want.
Counters:
"MSExchange RPCClient Access\Active User Count"
"MS Exchange OWA\Current Users"

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