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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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
share me the LVS configuration in redaht 5 is it supported for squid (proxy)
I need a load-balancing software that maintains a users session, always sending him to the same server whenever he accesses the site. Also, more tricky, I need for the software to kick him off when that server is down, instead of transferring him to an up server. Others accessing a site after user A, will be directed to the next available server. Does such a piece of software exsist? It really goes against the whole notion of load-balancing, but thats kind of what I need. Any suggestions?
hi, i have a small network about 100 user and i use windows 2003 server with ISA, and i have the syswan sw88 load balancer for 8 wan, i search for software for load balancing instead of the syswan any budy can help me on it? 10x
I would like recommend Zen load balancer http://zenloadbalancer.sourceforge.net a open source tcp load balancer which you can configure tcp farms load balancers, create advanced checks, monitorice server status and farms status, etc…
Hi,
I just gone through your posts.
this site is excellent…
thanks for the contributors.
actually I am new to load balancing.
I just worked with haproxy and nginx with a little basic configuration.
After working , both seems to be a bit same.
among haproxy and nginx, which load balancer is best interms of performance.
my requirement is I will be having 3 servers running a j2ee based web application (session based application like jpetstore).
I will be changing the configuration file dynamically via script (just to add IPAddress) . so i need to have a load balancer which supports dynamic reloading of configuration file, without restarting the load balancer service.
can you please suggest a load balancer, which will suite my need.
Since i am a beginner to load balancing, I am unable to select the best one,..
or if you know any other load balancer , i request you to suggest me.
thanks in advance,
sri
thank you
Hi
My Last work in RCISS is about “DDoS attack defense on Layer 7″. did anyone help me and let me to know Load balancing how and did have any background to countermeasure DDoS attack? if anyone have a practical solution with Load Balancing and real implementation please let us to have a share.
Best regards
Khalegh