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I would like to run 2 windows 7 machines in network load balancing mode.

If this possible?

Searching on the internet, I found a lot of references about 2 internet connections on one computer. That is not what I my issue is.. I would like to run 2 separate machines in load balancing mode.

Since I work in corporate environment, I cannot run Win2008R2 unless it is in a server room.

UPDATE (more information about why we are trying to do this): So our production servers are load balanced, therefore we want our dev-testing to be done on a load balanced server as well. Running win2008 is very expensive so trying to run win7. I see this as reason enough to try to network load balance win7

TarunJain
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    What do you mean by network load balancing? What are you load balancing? Why not put the server in a server room? – Bart De Vos Feb 10 '12 at 14:21
  • Are you sure you're not looking for something like card teaming, to create a virtual network card? – Bart Silverstrim Feb 10 '12 at 14:26
  • We have a situation where our servers as load balanced and we are trying to create development/DevTest environment which is exactly the same as production. The cost of maintaining a wind2k8 setup is much more expensive. So as a work around if we can do plain old windows NLB on windows 7 it will save a ton of money for us from licensing and maintenance point of view. – TarunJain Feb 10 '12 at 15:37
  • How can a platform on a different OS be `"exactly the same as production"`? – MDMarra Feb 10 '12 at 16:17
  • you are picking words here.. we want it to be similar at least the load balancing part. Also the IT dept will not allow windows server on the corporate network. Only windows 7 so my hand are tied – TarunJain Feb 10 '12 at 17:02
  • The words that I picked are your exact ones. Services behave differently on different platforms from time to time. IIS on Win 7 has many differences than IIS on 2008 R2, for example. That said, it sounds like you have a social/policy problem, not a technical one. Make a justification for your test environment and go from there. It's a reasonable request. There's nothing that we can do to change your corporate policy. – MDMarra Feb 10 '12 at 17:25

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No. NLB is a server role, you can't install it on Windows 7.

There's really no need to anyway, since it balances inbound services and Windown 7 shouldn't be used to host any of these. Why would you even want to do this?

To address your edit, running Server 2008 in a test environment is not expensive. That's exactly why a $300 technet subscription exists, which allows for unlimited installs in a non-production environment.

Even if you could install NLB on Windows 7 (which you can't), you want your test environment to mirror your production one, otherwise it's not a real test, is it?

MDMarra
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