Windows Server® 2012 Unleashed

Creating Port Rules

When an NLB cluster is created, one default port rule is created for the cluster. The NLB cluster default port rule and any additional rules define what type of network traffic the cluster will load balance and how the connections will be managed. The default rule can be modified and augmented with other rules, but within this rule the filtering option is what defines how the traffic will be balanced across each node.

In an NLB cluster, because each node can answer for the clustered IP address, all inbound traffic is received and processed by each node. When a node receives the request, it either handles the request or drops the packet if another node has already established a session or responded to the initial request. When ...