Windows Network Load Balancing on Imaged servers

Hi,

Having spent a most frustrating hour this afternoon trying to setup Windows Network Load Balancing (WNLB) on a VMware lab, I thought it might be useful to someone else to post the solution to my problem.

 

I had setup the 2 servers identically (from the same cloned machine in VMware). I had then changed the SID and prepared the app (IIS SMTP server).

 

I then setup the WNLB cluster on the first node and all was fine. Next I tried to add the 2nd node and now I faced a problem. It would simply not let me use the client accessible NIC (the first one in the machine). It presented the management NIC fine but not the client one.

 

So, after testing all sorts of things I found this:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828258

 

Basically the error I got was

 

"No interfaces are available for installing a new cluster"

 

It turns out that because I cloned the machine, they have the same Network card GUID in the registry which means WNLB can't add the main duplicate NIC to the cluster.

 

To solve the problem, I uninstalled the NIC and installed another one which rectified the problem.

 

Hope that saves someone else the time.

Cheers

Nathan