[kaltag]

Good evening, I'm looking at building a high traffic server (streaming HDTV and very large files) that will serve a Gigabit network and clients with a Gb switch. The server will have at least 2 nics in it and I was curious if it's possible to have samba "load balance" across both nics so that the server only appears as one machine on the network and will use both nics simultaneously? I've found plenty of info on setting it up on 2 subnets but I really don't wanna do that if at all possible. I've also found this thread http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...a+balance.html which makes it look like it'd be possible to setup iptables and have it do the balancing. Does Samba have any sort of internal ability to do this or am I looking at an external app/firewall rules? Any info is greatly appreciated.

[su root]

If you have a manageable switch, use ethernet bonding (802.3ad).

The load balancing setup you linked looks decent, but it will load balance on a per-connection basis.. it's possible to get 2 heavy users on one NIC, and no users, or very minimal users on the other.