[TriLUG] Re: Building a load balanced web cluster

[Jon Carnes]

I've done some crude testing, but my QA department is about to really put it
through a stress test.  The box only uses two NICs: external and internal.
The external pipe is 100Mb, the internal pipe is 200Mb (100/duplexed and
switched).  If it passes our stress test, then it becomes our recommended
solution for redundancy.

Load balancing is more than just a bandwidth game though.  Our bread and
butter is application servers.  Using a load balancer you can run multiple
small front ends to even more numerous small back end application servers.
Substitute the word "cheap" for "small" and you get the right idea...
Rather than pay BIG bucks for some gargantuan servers, you can use clusters
and get the same performance - with the added grace of redundancy and easy
expandability!

For detailed reports about the Linux Virtual Server check out the project
itself.  There are numerous papers on stress testing, and tweaking it.
*You,* Michael, will love it!  <you might even consider giving a talk about
it to the LUG...>

As for myself, I avoided having to learn all the tweaks by using an already
tweaked kernel from VA Linux.

Having waded through most of the reviews and papers, the summary is this:
  The LVS is more stable than any comparable Load Balancer out on the
market,
  It is easier to configure,
  Has more options/features,
  Is more secure, and
  At just the cost of a moderately nice machine, it is far cheaper.

Jon
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael S Czeiszperger" <czei at webperformanceinc.com>
To: <trilug at trilug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 3:05 PM
Subject: [TriLUG] Re: Building a load balanced web cluster


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> Thanks very much for the report. Have you load tested it? What's the
response
> curve? How many network cards did you have in it? What I've seen with load
> balancing is it doesn't take much to totally flood the ubiquitous 100 MBit
> LAN, so to handle the loads big enough to require load balancing requires
> either a 1-gig network or multiple NIC cards.
>
> - --
> Michael S Czeiszperger
> czei at webperformanceinc.com
>
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