Remotely teaming nic

[James Crosland]

I've got several ML570 spread about the country with two nics i each. I'd like to configure teaming on each server, without having to visit the site. If I try to do it remotely the connection drops as soon as you select to team the nics - a new card is created with no IP address.

Any ideas how I can work around this?

Thanks, James

[Jens Baumann_2 · Accepted solution]

- remote insight board. That's one of the reasons I really like them :)

If you do not have one in each of your servers, you probably are stuck with one of these suggestions:

- set up one machine at the location as a dhcp server - the newly configured "virgin" teams do dhcp. So install a (temporary) dhcp server and schedule a reboot (per "at" or whatever) to reboot the teamed server a minute or two after you configure the network settings. When it comes up, configure the static address.

- do a little script that searches HKLM-system-currentcontrolset-services-tcpip-parameters-interfaces (that's for W2K) for an interface with DHCP enabled and have it write the parameters you want into the registry. As above, schedule a batch file which calls that script and then does a reboot for a minute or two after you configure the teaming settings. I have a script which we used to modify MTU settings, maybe you could adjust that to your needs. Just modify the registry parameter to look for and the new parameters to set.

- have somebody there with a telephone and a keyboard connected to the server :)

[Peter Frazer]

One way to do this elegantly is to use the cqniccmd.exe utility from the SmartStart Scripting Toolkit (also included with Support Pack and SmartStart CD 5.40 and later). This will allow you to take a snapshot of a currently configured system and apply it to similar or dissimilar hardware. You can read the SmartStart Scripting toolkit Best Practices guide Appendix C for detailed info. You can then use one of the aforementioned scripts to go in and modify the IP.

I personally like having a DHCP server available. One thing that you can do is set up a scope of 1 address and assign a static lease (given you know your machine's MAC address). Then, just be sure that your team is using the MAC address that you want (configurable in the config file). The potential conflict here could be DNS (presumably WINS would be recconfigured from DHCP) so you would want to check those before starting.

This is just what I can think of now, but I would be interested to see what others have done.

Peter

[James Crosland]

Thanks for both your answers, I'll go through each of the points.

- Unfortunately no insight board, yes I know the easy answer!

- I'm trying to think of the process that happens, when you team the cards, does it require a reboot before it picks up the DHCP?

- Would be good to have a look at your script if you don't mind my mail address is jc2xx @ hotmail.com without the space (not sure if there's a strange thing that stops you putting mail addresses on here!

- Some sites we've users capable of talking through, other sites we've users who aren't capable of using a keyboard and monitor!

- The scripting idea sounds interesting. All the servers are configured in a very similar way (same hardware, smae name for nics) I'll have a look into it.

- The WINS/DNS side wouldn't matter too much as long as I know the IP can remote to the machine and then set statics up accordingly. All the sites only have the one data server (which also does WINS/DNS/DHCP) so would just be a case of setting back to the correct details.

Thanks, James