Figure 7.17 Setting the network adapter binding order
A network topology generator is used to build the various cluster networks that are
available to clustering. If multiple network adapters exist that are on the same IP
subnet, they will automatically be grouped into the same cluster network. This is
important to understand from a resiliency perspective. Imagine that you place two
NICs in a node, both on the same subnet, that you wish clustering to use for high
availability. What will happen is that both NICs will be placed in the same cluster
network and only one of them will be used, removing any redundancy. The correct
way to achieve redundancy in this situation is to use NIC Teaming to join the two
NICs. When you have NICs on different subnets, they will be seen as different cluster
networks, and then clustering can utilize them for high availability across the different
network routes. If you were looking to leverage SMB multichannel, you would need to
place each NIC on a different subnet, which is a cluster-specific requirement, because
normally SMB multichannel will work with NICs on the same subnet.
By default, the cluster creation process will use the network topology generator, and