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General DiscussionDividing Network tasks to individual Cores of the CPU

  • Thursday, November 05, 2009 8:18 AMSalmanR Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    Hi,

    I'm dealing with a situation in which there is Windows 2008 installed on a powerful server having Intel dual core processor. There are two network cards installed on it and the server is receiving huge amount of data on both network cards. Can anyone please tell me how can I assign each core to each network card using Windows 2008 Server so that the data traffic is perfectly balanced on the two network cards?

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  • Friday, November 06, 2009 11:18 AMMarco ShawMVP, ModeratorUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    This is a Server 2008 R2 specific forum.

    As far as I'm aware, you're not going to be able to do this.  I doubt you can set processor affinity in a device driver, especially if your two cards are exactly the same, and the same device driver is being used.  You can't be certain whatever your server application is, that it will be able to do this also.

    I'd think about also asking the network card manufacturer about this.
  • Friday, November 06, 2009 11:40 PMMarco ShawMVP, ModeratorUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    Actually, this may actually be easier than I though...  For example:
    http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid1_gci891395,00.html
  • Saturday, November 07, 2009 6:03 AMSalmanR Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
    First of all thank you so much for your help Marco, I would really give serious thoughts to the article you suggested.

    But the problem in using this driver is that it is not supported by Microsoft and I am in no position to take the risk, as the use is in the commercial sector, which by any means does not allow any non compliant application to be used in the server.

    And one thing I forgot to mention, I want to discuss this problem with respect to Windows server 2008 R2 specifically, which I forgot to mention in the heading of my post :-) sorry for that


    Regards