NLB in Windows 2012 Step by step

 
Network Load Balancing clusters enable you to manage a group of independent servers as a single system for greater scalability, increased availability, and easier manageability. You can use Network Load Balancing to implement enterprise-wide scalable solutions for the delivery of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) based services and applications.Network Load Balancing as many advantages over other load balancing solutions that can introduce single points of failure or performance bottlenecks. Because there are no special hardware requirements for Network Load Balancing, you can use any industry standard compatible computer in a Network Load Balancing cluster.
1. First need to  Install the Windows NLB feature on all of the node (In my case two nodes) need to be added into the NLB.
Go in to Server manager > Manage >Add New Feature

 

2. Then you will get the below mentioned detail screen. click next to continue


3. Need to select Role-base or Feature-base installation. If you are doing this remotely from another server then you can select the second option.


4. Select the Server from the server pool


5. Next page, now you can select NLB feature and click next.


6.Add the features.


7. now you can see the confirmation window. read that and click next to proceed.
 

8. Once done, you will be able to logging to NLB wizard


9. Go in to “Network Load Balancing Manager” and right click and select "New Cluster"


10. Now you can give the primary Server Host IP address


11. Next window will ask for a cluster IP and the Name configuration.



12. Other Cluster parameter can be entered here.


13. Here you can configure the port rules.


14. Recommended way is to add the port rules and initial configuration you can keep all ports open. When you are commissioning then you can add the specific ports.


15. Once this done, you will see the firs node was added to the NLB cluster. now you need to configure the secondary node.


16. Follow the same steps mentioned above and give the secondary server IP address.


Here you can see that I have configured a another network card for HB.




Now you will see both the nodes are active.


If you want to change the Priority of those nodes you can select one node and change the priority.


Hope this will help you to configure NLB in Windows 2012 Server.