Hi, I have two vlans, 1 called staff and 1 for called management. We want to be able to direct backup traffic through the mgmt nic vlan. The primary nic of the server address is 192.168.64.X with DNS and DFGY configured and the 2nd nic (backup) is 192.168.50.X with no dns or gateway address. The are both plugged into seperate switches on different vlans. I can successfuly backup the servers if i add the server addresses in the hosts file everthing works a treat. what i would prefer to do is somehow get this working using DNS. Problem is, the binding nic is on the management vlan and has to stay on this. when ever it queries dns it will alway bring back the incorrect result back as i want the name to ip mapping for the backup ip address but this is not registerd in dns. Any suggestions to how this could be done? Thanks phill

This is a topic that crops up from time to time. The answer is always the same. It won't work. If you have the name of a server resolving to two different IP addresses you will have major problems. It will only work if DNS resolves only the IP of the "normal" NIC and the backup uses IP addressing, not names. What NIC is used depends on the IP address of the target machine. If the target has a 192.168.50 address, the server will send the packet from its 192.168.50 NIC. Are you sure you are not trying to solve a non-existent problem? Do you have any evidence to show that your network can't cope with the backup traffic? Bill

Hi, Thank you for your post here. From the description, you want to introduce the DNS service and register the backup NIC in the management VLAN. Agree with Bill that there will be problems in DNS resolution when you have two IP address for the same computer. If you persist to have DNS service in the management VLAN, you may consider to install a dedicated DNS server in the management VLAN which hold a separate DNS zone. All backup nodes would register its DNS records in this DNS server instead of the ones in staff VLAN.