Microsoft KB Archive/329517

= INFO: Application Center 2000 Requires a Default Gateway on the Management Network Adapter =

Article ID: 329517

Article Last Modified on 6/11/2003

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Application Center 2000 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q329517





SUMMARY
You cannot create an Application Center 2000 cluster on a server that does not have a default gateway configured for the management (back end) network adapter.

If the management network adapter that is on your cluster is connected to an isolated private network that has no routers (and therefore no gateway addresses), you can use the IP address of the management network adapter as the default gateway address for the network adapter.

If you do this, also configure a default gateway on a network adapter that is connected to your client computers (typically the front-end or load-balanced network adapter), and then set the gateway metric on the management network adapter to be higher than the gateway metric on the network adapter that is connected to your client computers.



MORE INFORMATION
The active default gateway identifies the network adapter and the router that are to be used as a last resort for outbound traffic that cannot be routed by any other routing rule. As a result, only one active default gateway exists on a system, regardless of how many network adapters are installed in the computer. However, you can configure more than one default gateway to provide redundancy if the network adapter or the router of the active default gateway fail.

You can also configure more than one default gateway to satisfy the requirements of Application Center 2000 (as mentioned earlier in this article).

Multiple Default Gateways
If you have more than one default gateway, control the failover order by setting the gateway metric so that each default gateway has a different metric. In this way, the gateway that has the lowest metric is the active default gateway as long as it is functional.

If you have multiple default gateways that all have the same interface metric (this is the case if DHCP configures the gateway), or if you manually configure all the gateways to use the same interface metric, the system selects one of the gateways and arbitrarily designates it as the active default gateway. The other default gateways are not used unless the active default gateway fails.

In practice, if you have multiple default gateways with the same metric, the gateway that is listed last when you carry out a route print is typically the gateway that the operating system designates as the active default gateway. However, Microsoft does not recommend that you rely on this behavior.

