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I just got a new position where my primary function is software development. As some side work they have me doing a little networking and a little administration.

The latter I have some experience with but networking is something I've never done outside of small business or home networks.

One of the tasks they have set forth for me is to find a way to allow 3 separate server blades (with access to the internet) to be able to connect to multiple systems on a LAN that cannot be able to connect to an outside network.

Basically the systems on the LAN will only see each other and the 3 servers, while the 3 servers should be able to connect to the internet for RDP purposes.

With my limited experience my initial thought was to see if there was a way to setup the server blades with access to 2 networks, 1 being the primary network with an internet conection, and the other being a network switch with each of the secondary devices attached to it.

Is that something that would be possible? Or is there perhaps another solution that will bring me to the same result?

As a note, the server blades are running Windows Server 2012 and each server has a different purpose but all 3 need access to the offline systems.

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  • VLANs are your best bet.
    – Nathan C
    Mar 15, 2016 at 18:00
  • Are these two networks already existing networks? Or are you building them from scratch? Mar 15, 2016 at 19:48
  • @NathanC, looking into VLANs as that's something I'm not familiar with configuring. Thanks for the direction.
    – Aloehart
    Mar 15, 2016 at 20:10
  • @MarkHenderson The network with internet access is pre-existing. The small LAN with a few systems is being built from scratch.
    – Aloehart
    Mar 15, 2016 at 20:11
  • If the purpose is to keep the new network secure, this isn't really a good way to do it as compromising any one of these machines would compromise the internal network. Mar 15, 2016 at 23:37

1 Answer 1

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This can be as easy as it sounds: You have two networks, so plug the servers into both networks. Bam. The servers can access both networks.

Just make sure that each network is on a different subnet and you should be good to go. I am assuming that your servers have multiple network cards (most do).

If they don't have separate network cards (or even if they do and you don't want to cable them both up), then you can get a switch that supports VLANs, and segregate your network into two parts.

You would use 802.1q vlan tagging for the ports going to the server, and assign the two different network VLANs there. Then you would use port-based VLANs for the rest of the ports - put the router onto the internet-enabled VLAN and the rest of the computers onto your other vlan.

The issue with multi-homing servers with networks that are not bidirectional can be that the servers will register both their IP addresses with the DNS server. This can mean that clients might try to access the IP address of the server on the uncontactable network, so you will want to disable automatic DNS registration for the network adapter that is not accessible from the clients.

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