[c-nsp] SLB Question

[Paul Stewart]

Hi folks...

I've been reading about SLB and have a quick question I think....

We have a pair of servers that will be providing SMTP/POP3/DNS - the data
between the two are replicated in real-time.  The plan is to give each
server a real IP address and then serve traffic in an active/standby
configuration.  The servers are within the same subnet and there are several
other servers in the same subnet that must communicate with them.

Running NAT we'll presume is NOT an option in this setup.  The two servers
are directly connected to a Catalyst 6500 running native IOS (sup2/msfc2)

My question(s) are:

Is there a way to have SLB answer a virtual address that is forwarded to the
real IP of *one* of the servers while maintaining an active/standy
configuration?  The docs only talk about load balancing itself.....

I understand that with NAT you can do this but without NAT the options are
much more limited?

If we plugin each server to a seperate 6500, and run NAT - does this
complicate matters or matter at all?  The obvious solution is to do this on
the servers themselves

Thanks in advance,

Paul