This a very good question Jawad.

Certainly you could place mutliple NIC cards on the ADSM Server, place
multiple entries in the DNS and then setup the DNS to round-robin the
address assignment.
This is a good idea when you want to span mutliple clients over multiple NIC
cards.

You could also install multiple ADSM Services and in each of the dsm.opt
file's specify a different tcpclientaddress to allow all traffic to be
routed through a specific NIC.
In the instance of a restore I suppose that you could specify the
tcpserveraddress with it's ip address in the opt file rather than it's DNS
alias.
I am not aware of any way to setup this up to dynamically load balance.
Although if you know differenet I'd love to know.

Nathan


        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Survoy, Bernard J [SMTP:SurvoBJ AT NORTHAMERICA.STORTEK DOT COM]
        Sent:   Monday, February 08, 1999 10:31 AM
        To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        Subject:        Re: ADSM and multiple NIC's

        On a previous engagement we implemented this type of approach in a
100Mb
        switched Ethernet environment to keep traffic on the backplane of
switches
        and to prevent interswitch traffic.  On the server side, multiple
NICs were
        defined at the UNIX level.  On the client side, the TCPSERVERADDRESS
was
        used to direct backup traffic to these different NICs.  Also, we
were
        looking into the use of multiple NICs from a single server with
BACKINT/ADSM
        to the ADSM server by setting up multiple client option stanzas and
using
        the ability of BACKINT to send some sessions out one interface and
the rest
        out another interface to improve parallelism and throughput.  In the
latter
        case, both the TCPSERVERADDRESS and TCPCLIENTADDRESS parameters
would be
        used.

        In a normal client configuration, you would run multiple client
processes
        defining multiple nodes per physical platform, segregating
filesystems
        between the client nodes (via DOMAIN statements).

        -----Original Message-----
        From: Butt, Jawad (CAP, ITS, CA) [mailto:JButt AT GECTS.GE DOT COM]
        Sent: Monday, February 08, 1999 12:49 AM
        To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        Subject: ADSM and multiple NIC's


        Hi all
        I have a few questions regarding how ADSM can handle multiple NIC
cards.
        Currently i have a requirement to back up almost a terabyte of data
(in
        6 hrs) from various clients (NT, SUN, AS/400) to an RS/6000 ADSM
server.
        I am planning to put multiple NIC's (probably ATM cards) on the
server
        and on large clients as well.

        1. How does an ADSM client handle multiple NIC's. When you initiate
        backup , can you implement load sharing in any way over the two (or
        more) NIC's. Can we use the "tcpserveraddress" parameter specifying
        different ip addresses of the NIC's on the RS/6000 ADSM server? are
        there any other options

        2. For an ADSM server with multiple NIC's (and IP addresses), can
you
        specify which NIC to send data from when restoring a client. A
client
        like Win95 would only have one IP address so how would you manage
that

        I hope i am not missing something basic here. Thanks in advance.


        Jawad Khayyam Butt

        Senior Integration Specialist
        GE Capital IT Solutions
        5985 Mclaughlin Road, Mississauga, ON L5R 1B8

        Tel: 905-568-9707x7151     Email: jbutt AT gects.ge DOT com