Configuring multicast ND
Microsoft Network Load Balancing (NLB) is a load balancing technology for server clustering developed on Windows Server.
NLB supports load sharing and redundancy among servers within a cluster. To implement fast failover, NLB requires that the switch forwards network traffic to all servers or specific servers in the cluster, and each server filters out unexpected traffic. In a medium or small data center that uses the Windows Server, the switch series must support cooperating with NLB by multicast ND. For more information about NLB, see the related documents of Windows Sever.
To make the switch forward network traffic to all servers or specific servers, Microsoft NLB provides the following packet sending modes:
Unicast mode—NLB assigns each cluster member a common MAC address, which is the cluster MAC address, and changes the source MAC address of each sent packet. Thus, the switch cannot add the cluster MAC address to its MAC table. In addition, because the cluster MAC address is unknown to the switch, packets destined to it are forwarded on all the ports of the switch.
Multicast mode—NLB uses a multicast MAC address that is a virtual MAC address for network communication (for example, 0300-5e11-1111).
IGMP multicast mode—The switch sends packets only out of the ports that connect to the cluster members rather than all ports.
![[IMPORTANT: ]](images/important.png) | IMPORTANT: Multicast ND is applicable to only multicast-mode NLB. | |
To configure multicast ND:
Step | Command | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
1. Enter system view. | system-view | N/A |
2. Configure a static neighbor entry. | ipv6 neighbor ipv6-address mac-address vlan-id port-type port-number [ vpn-instance vpn-instance-name ] | N/A |
3. Configure a static multicast MAC address entry. | mac-address multicast mac-address interface interface-list vlan vlan-id | For more information, see IP Multicast Command Reference. |