Configuring Network Load Balancing on Windows 2012 Server

The Network Load Balancing (NLB) feature distributes traffic across several servers by using the TCP/IP networking protocol. By combining two or more computers that are running applications into a single virtual cluster, NLB provides reliability and performance for web servers and other mission-critical servers.

Servers that we will add to the NLB clusters has to have 2 NICs. One for management network and the other for NLB network. 

 

 

Add Network Load Balancing on your both servers as below. Server Manager > Add Roles >Skip the Roles Section and Select Network Load Balancing from the Features Section

 

And complete the rest of the wizard. 

 

 

Open up Network Load Balancing Manager from Administrative Tools. New cluster and add the management IP of the First Server.

 

 

Enter the management NIC of the server1

 

Both interfaces will be listed. Select the NLB NIC and hit Next

 

 

Click Next

 

 

Define the Cluster IP address

 

 

Select Multicast

 

 

 Click Finish

 

 

Now add the second server to the cluster.

 

 

Both servers are added to the cluster