Can I have some suggestions on how to load balance servers that are on seperate IP blocks? Is there any way to perform translation at this level? Exclude DNS based balancing please... -- Jason Greenberg, CCIE #11021 Network Administrator Execulink, Inc. <jg@execulink.com>
On 6 Aug 2003, Jason Greenberg wrote:
Can I have some suggestions on how to load balance servers that are on seperate IP blocks? Is there any way to perform translation at this level? Exclude DNS based balancing please...
Take a look at Nortel's Alteon product line, Cisco's CSS product line, or F5's BigIP Product Line. All of which have Global Server Load Balancing capability. The GSLB can be done a number of different ways on these boxes including stupid DNS tricks (not your typical round robin stuff, but still DNS) and using a BGP configuration. Hope this helps! allan -- Allan Liska allan@allan.org http://www.allan.org
On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 13:39, Allan Liska wrote:
On 6 Aug 2003, Jason Greenberg wrote:
Can I have some suggestions on how to load balance servers that are on seperate IP blocks? Is there any way to perform translation at this level? Exclude DNS based balancing please...
Take a look at Nortel's Alteon product line, Cisco's CSS product line, or F5's BigIP Product Line. All of which have Global Server Load Balancing capability. The GSLB can be done a number of different ways on these boxes including stupid DNS tricks (not your typical round robin stuff, but still DNS) and using a BGP configuration.
I second this suggestion. I worked briefly at F5 Networks in 2001 and was responsible for supporting Big-IP and 3DNS. Both are very nice products, but NOT cheap. -J.
On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 01:50:33PM -0400, Jason Dixon wrote:
I second this suggestion. I worked briefly at F5 Networks in 2001 and was responsible for supporting Big-IP and 3DNS. Both are very nice products, but NOT cheap.
I've used them all fairly heavily, except the Foundry gear. Alteon's my personal fave. Biggest problem with the F5: hard drive. In my book, that means you instantly need two, doubling the price. For price concerns, tho, just check ebay. $13k AD3s for $2500...don't say nothing good came from the dotcom crash. John
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Jason Greenberg wrote:
Can I have some suggestions on how to load balance servers that are on seperate IP blocks? Is there any way to perform translation at this level? Exclude DNS based balancing please...
vrrp on FreeBSD is supposed to be a free solution to allow machines to watch each other and take over IP addressing if connectivity is lost. Depending on how remote your IP blocks are and how much control you have over the routing equipment in between, your only choice may be a commercial solution. http://www.bsdshell.net/hut_vrrpimpl.html I've not used it, and the documentation is currently in French. The HUT project also has FreeBSD load balancing software for free that is supposed to function like F5/Alteon/Cisco LB. I've maintained the Cisco CS 1100 (when it was Arrowpoint) in production. You could VLAN remote machines into what you want to do on that. I think that equipment has changed quite a bit though since Cisco bought them and my experience is over a year old. G
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Gerald wrote:
vrrp on FreeBSD is supposed to be a free solution to allow machines to watch each other and take over IP addressing if connectivity is lost. Depending on how remote your IP blocks are and how much control you have over the routing equipment in between, your only choice may be a commercial solution.
Two things to keep in mind: VRRP is not a load balancing solution, it is a failover solution and (AFAIK) VRRP only operates within-network. allan -- Allan Liska allan@allan.org http://www.allan.org
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Allan Liska wrote:
Two things to keep in mind: VRRP is not a load balancing solution, it is a failover solution
You are very correct sir. :-) The load balancing part from the same project is: http://www.bsdshell.net/hut_loadd.html
and (AFAIK) VRRP only operates within-network.
I haven't seen anything that said one way or another on this part. I think we would have to know more about the network that is considering deploying this to know if the IP addressing could be re-routed to the backup interface that comes up in the event of a failure. G
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Gerald wrote:
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Jason Greenberg wrote:
Can I have some suggestions on how to load balance servers that are on seperate IP blocks? Is there any way to perform translation at this level? Exclude DNS based balancing please...
vrrp on FreeBSD is supposed to be a free solution to allow machines to watch each other and take over IP addressing if connectivity is lost. Depending on how remote your IP blocks are and how much control you have over the routing equipment in between, your only choice may be a commercial solution.
Don't forget pen, which runs on FreeBSD (and even NT according to the author). http://siag.nu/pen/ It's not for the enterprise, but does provide simple load-balancing for people who can't afford a proper switch. Andy --- Andy Dills Xecunet, Inc. www.xecu.net 301-682-9972 ---
participants (6)
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Allan Liska -
Andy Dills -
Gerald -
Jason Dixon -
Jason Greenberg -
John Kinsella