Why having two NIC in my server?

[willsoft]

Hi everybody:
I have a proliant ML350 G4, and just have one nic card... and watching videos on youtube about installing windows sbs 2003, they use two nics.

So what improvements give having 2 nics?

Thanks

[TTr · Accepted solution]

Having two NICs can help but is most cases you have to have the necessary LAN infrastructure. The are aome cases where you use need/use two NICs
1. If you have dual core LAN you can use the second NIC for failover.
2. You can set up a trunk/aggregate to double the bandwidth.
3. You can connect the server to two separate LANs/segments and setup different LAN traffic patters for the different application that might be running in your server
4. Setup the server as a network gateway (router).
There may be more uses examples.

[Wayne Henegar]

SBS 2003 will function fine with one NIC. The only reason for two NICs is if you want to use the ISA feature of SBS2003. (One NIC for Internet, the other for local LAN.) MS has done away with that feature in SBS2008, so looks like the trend is away from 2 NICs on SBS.

[willsoft]

So maybe, I could add one nic for using on LAN, and the other nic for my public IP, or this practice could have problems on security?

[TTr]

> one nic for using on LAN, and the other nic for my public IP, or this practice could have problems on security?

That's a gateway (router) setup. The NIC that's is using the LAN could allow other devices in your LAN to connect to the public IP (internet).
There is a security risk doing this so spend some time becoming familiar with this type of environment before you go ahead with this setup. You should harden the OS first and then complement it with additional protection such as firewall, intrusion detection, antivirus etc.

[jplarson]

At my company our server has 3 network ports on the server. One goes out to the network and the other two connect to Snap Servers via iSCSI which serves as our network storage locations.

[willsoft]

I found this on a book:
Note: If you are intending to use ISA Server as your Internet gateway, you will be required to have two
network cards: one for the internal network and one for accessing the Internet. If you have only one network
card at this time, youâ ll need to install one later. Having two NICS is the recommended approach, and this is
upheld throughout the existing SBS 2003 user community.
Title: Pro Windows Small Business Server
Author: Tony Campbell
Apress

[Wayne Henegar]

Campbell's book is a 2006 edition. I would say the quote was accurate for the thinking in 06. I think MS has changed thinking since then, enlight of SBS2008. If you want SBS2003 to be your gateway router, then put in the second NIC and configure ISA. But it is just as much the standard to use an external router for the network gateway and set the SBS single nic server on the network. Be sure that the SBS server is the only DHCP server on the network. (Harry Brelsford is a good reference.)