Static Routes in Server 2008 R2 Not Consistent

The Issue:

Onsite with a customer setting up the initial E2010 DAG MBX servers.  In constructing the MAPInet and REPLnet NICs on each server, we noticed that the static routes were not behaving as expected.

We checked the commands for establishing the static routes and how the NICs were setup.  We were consistent across the board, on both subnets and sites.  As an example, here is what we were using from the one site:

route add 10.12.93.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.1.26.1 if 15 –p

This resulted in a 80% failure rate at that one site to establish a static route for the REPLnet traffic (for you score keepers, this equates to 40% failure across the environment).  Obviously, we cannot continue with DAG construction until this is resolved.

The Fix

netsh int ipv4 add route 10.12.93.0/24 “replnet” 10.1.26.1

Using the netsh method resulted in 100% success at not only putting a persistent route into place but actually having it work!

Thanks to http://fixmyitsystem.com/2010/10/adding-static-route-using-netsh-and.html for having a nice little article on this subject.

YMMV.