They connect via SmartConnect.

Each node has a network address.

The smartconnect policy setting is Round Robin

It seems set up correctly but obviously not!

Hi Vince,

no that's not normal.

You should check:

- how do the clients connect: if they connect via IP, they only connect to the node who serves this IP.

- Subnet Setting: do you have network interfaces of every node in your IP Adress pool?

- SmartConnect Policy settings

Yes if I ping the ZoneName I get a different IP each time.

I can browse through to each ip address and I can see all the fileshares from each one.

use nslookup "smartzonename" multiple times.

if you ping the SmartConnect ZoneName from the client 5 Times do you get 5 different IPs back?

can you connect to every ip from the client?

how do the "pool members" of your subnet look like?

I get different IP’s each time

are these CIFS or NFS connections ?

CIFS

are you licensed for SmartConnect Advances, if yes could you change policy to Connection Count instead of Round Robin ?

It won’t affect current connections will it?

it will not impact current connections

I’ve changed to Connection Count, but still on the connections are going through node 1

As is it always node 1... are you mounting from the SmartConnect zone name or from the

SmartConnect service address (or name) ? The latter always operates on the

node with the lowest number, which apparently happens to be---node 1.

If you do use the SmartConnect zone name, then the first IP returned might

had been massively cached, breaking all rules (TTL time to live = 0 secs!).

Check your DNS server for cache content and cache settings;

Windows servers cache for at least one second, but should not be

allowed for longer caching.

Addition caching might occur on the clients; don't rely on ping tests

as different caching might be in effect for mounts. (Google for

SMB DNS caching and your particular client OS, and your DNS server.)

They currently connect through the SmartConnect service name

VinceNoir wrote: They currently connect through the SmartConnect service name

that's your problem, should be connecting to SmartConnect zone name, good catch Peter.