Question : Problem: OWA 2003 with Round Robin DNS Slow to Connect

I just added a new front end server for OWA/VPN so we could use round robin DNS and have higher availability since our old OWA/VPN server is well......old (Server A - see below).  Here are the server specs

Server A
Compaq PL 1600
Dual PII 450mhz
512MB RAM
GB NIC - 1 port
W2K3
Exchange 2K3 (Front End for OWA)
MS VPN using RRAS

Server B
Dell PE 850
Pentium D 3ghz
2GB RAM
GB NIC - 2ports
Win2K3
Exchange 2K3 (Frontend for OWA)
MS VPN using RRAS

We are on a T1 .  We use a Cisco 515E FW.  I have Server A hooked into our Cisco 4507R switch and I hooked one NIC on Server B into the 4507 and the other into a Dell PC 2724 switch.  

All 3 NICs have static IP addresses.  I can connect to all of them internally just fine & very quickly.  I've replicated all of the NAT entries on the 515e so that all the same ports are open/closed for all three IP addresses.  All IIS & RRAS settings appear to be the same on both servers.

PROBLEM
When connecting to OWA on EITHER of Server B's IP addresses, it can take up to 60 seconds to get the login prompt. I've verified it's just those two IP addresses by pinging before I try to connect.  Server A (the old clunky server) prompts in less than two seconds.  This has also wreaked havoc with all of our employees using Treos, Smartphones, etc etc that retrieve mail via the OWA address.  

So it's been established that "technically" round robin is working and it does send the connections to the different addresses, but whenever a user is being sent to either of the new server addresses, it is painfully slow.

I've waited a week to see if it was just taking an extra long time for the new DNS entries to propogate but there has been no improvement.


I'm stumped & frustrated because what was supposed to be an improvement has been more of an albatross.

I would greatly appreciate if someone could help me learn what I've done wrong.

Thank you.

Answer : Problem: OWA 2003 with Round Robin DNS Slow to Connect

Okay so the issue ended up being bad memory.  i jumped on the server and while in the middle of looking through the NLB as suggested, it gave me a BSOD with a HW memory parity error.  I pulled out the 2nd set of RAM & still received the error later on.  So i swapped out the 2nd set with the first set & it has been running smoothly with no BSOD & the prompt comes up much quicker.  I really wouldn't think that bad memory would cause for a long login prompt and have everything else work okay but that seemed to have fixed it.

thanks so much for the help.