I've worked with a various load balancing systems (LBS). They are complex pieces of hardware and software. In this post I will highlight some of the open source load balancing software. But what is load balancing?
It is nothing but a technique used to share (spared) load / services between two or more servers. For example, busy e-commerce or bank website uses load balancer to increase reliability, throughput, uptime, response time and better resource utilization. You can use following softwares as an advanced load balancing solution for web, cache, dns, mail, ftp, auth servers, VoIP services etc.
Linux Virtual Server (LVS)
LVS is ultimate open source Linux load sharing and balancing software. You can easily build a high-performance and highly available server for Linux using this software. From the project page:
Virtual server is a highly scalable and highly available server built on a cluster of real servers. The architecture of server cluster is fully transparent to end users, and the users interact with the cluster system as if it were only a single high-performance virtual server.
Red Hat Cluster Suite
It is a high availability cluster software implementation from Linux leader Red Hat. It provide two type services:
- Application / Service Failover - Create n-node server clusters for failover of key applications and services
- IP Load Balancing - Load balance incoming IP network requests across a farm of servers
The High Availability Linux Project
Linux-HA provides sophisticated high-availability (failover) capabilities on a wide range of platforms, supporting several tens of thousands of mission critical sites.
Ultra Monkey
Ultra Monkey is a project to create load balanced and highly available network services. For example a cluster of web servers that appear as a single web server to end-users. The service may be for end-users across the world connected via the internet, or for enterprise users connected via an intranet.
Ultra Monkey makes use of the Linux operating system to provide a flexible solution that can be tailored to a wide range of needs. From small clusters of only two nodes to large systems serving thousands of connections per second.
Personally, I've worked with both LVS and Red Hat Cluster Suite and I highly recommend these softwares.
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- Last Updated: Mar/11/2008
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Vivek,
I’ve been using Linux-Ha and RHCS for failover clustering. I’m interested in Load balancing cluster. Can you share a tutorial about it (LVS)?
Thank you very much.
ari_stress,
LVS easy; you also aware of RHCS.
Hi Ari,
I am also considering to implement a failover cluster. What are your comment on Linux-Ha and RHCS? Do you implement the two together?
From LVS, all you really need to use is their vrrp daemon, Keepalived. It is really simple to setup and “Just Works TM” using multicast to send heartbeats between various nodes.
http://keepalived.org
I’ve written several scripts to help work with keepalived on various state changes you can get…
@Jacky
RHCS = polished and feature rich, but it’s vendor oriented (RH only).
Linux-Ha = not-so-polished but comparable feature rich.
I recommend Linux-Ha.
I’d suggest ha-proxy, which in terms of lb leaves the rust out in the dust
Tagged as: availability cluster, balancing systems, cluster software, cluster system, load balance, load balancer, load balancing software, load balancing solution, network requests, resource utilization, server clusters, software implementation, voip services