Aliasing the network interface card or loopback device
About this task
The cluster address should not be aliased to the loopback interface if the server is defined for NAT (Network Address Translation) forwarding.
To alias the loopback device on servers that are being load-balanced, you must use the operating system's adapter configure commands. For the load-balanced server machines to work, you must set, or preferably alias, the loopback device, which is often called lo0, to the cluster address. By setting or aliasing the loopback device to the cluster address, the load balanced server machines will accept a packet that was addressed to the cluster address.
If you have
an operating system that supports network interface aliasing (such
as AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, or Windows systems), you should alias
the loopback device to the cluster address. The benefit of using an
operating system that supports aliases is that you have the ability
to configure the load-balanced server machines to serve multiple cluster
addresses.
Note: See Configuring loopbacks with alternative methods. If you have a server with
an operating system that does not support aliases you must set the
loopback device to the cluster address.