Load Balancing

Contents

What is Load Balancing Load Balancer and Back-End Layer-2 Load Balancing Layer-4 Load Balancing Layer-7 Load Balancing Persistence DNS Load Balancing Database Load Balancing Load-Balancing Clusters More Software Solutions

What is Load Balancing?

Load balancing is a computer networking methodology to distribute workload across multiple resources to achieve

optimal resource utilization maximize throughput minimize response time avoid overload

Load Balancer and Back-End

A Load Balancer (Front-End Server) is usually used Receives computed outputs from several BackEnd Servers In Multitier architecture, terminology of designs may include

Stovepipes Bowties

Load Balancer and Back-End

Redirects traffic according to algorithm/availability/traffic but stays as a mediator between the user and the back-end servers

Server Health Checking through Ping/TCP Connect/HTTP Get Header/HTTP Get Content Custom checks can be designed too

Layer-2 Load Balancing

Bonding Bond two or more links into a single, higherbandwidth logical link

NIC Teaming Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)

Layer 4 Load Balancer/Router

MultiLayer Switch

Practically a NAT with port and transaction awareness least load fastest response times balancing requests out if one machine is not up, the router will not send traffic to it

Modern load balancing routers can use rules

IPVS in the Linux Virtual Server (LVS)

Layer-7 Load Balancing

Reverse Proxy Parse requests in application layer and distribute requests to servers based on different types of request contents LoadBalancing.org recommends HAProxy for open-source

Citrix netscaler and F5 are also said to dominate this market

Also KTCPVS

Layer-7 Load Switching

Persistence

When a user is directed to one server The user is kept redirected to that server Source IP Persistence

Not good for multiple access behind one IP Good for HTTP but there are famous vendors that also do RDP Cookies (HAProxy)

Cookie Based

DNS Load Balancing

Using the Zone File When the Server is down...

Its DNS will not respond Quickest DNS responder will be the closest

@ in a 192.0.2.1 one.example.org A 192.0.2.1 two.example.org A 203.0.113.2 www.example.org NS one.example.org www.example.org NS two.example.org

Database Load Balancing

Oracle RAC MySQL Cluster or through middle-ware like MySQL Load Balancing Proxy

Load-Balancing Clusters

Usually a group of computers connected in a LAN to make a Virtual Server More cost-effective than single computers with similar performance Some software used is

MPI Library Beowulf, distcc, and MPICH. Linux Virtual Server, Linux-HA

More Software Solutions

Apache web server's mod_proxy_balancer extension Varnish (HTTP Accelerator/Reverse Proxy) Pound (Reverse Proxy/Load Balancer) Gearman (application framework designed to distribute appropriate computer tasks to multiple computers) Redundant Firewalls with OpenBSD F5 uses FreeBSD, RedHat Cluster, Linux-HA, Ultra Monkey, Linux Virtual Server