[AusNOG] Experiences with web load balancers

[Curtis Bayne]

As nobody seems to have mentioned it yet, I am putting in my 2.2c (GST  
Inc) and suggesting nginx.

A lot of high traffic sites are using nginx for load balancing/reverse  
proxy and it is a pretty snazzy webserver for static content in its  
own right. The performance metrics that it is displaying are quite  
amazing.

If all you are doing is balancing it should scale well into tens of  
thousands of requests per second, although I have never personally  
pushed it this far.


Curtis


Sent from my iPhone

On 16/01/2010, at 5:43 AM, "Andy Davidson" <andy at nosignal.org> wrote:

>
> On 14 Jan 2010, at 23:12, Michael Richardson wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering if anyone would be able to make some recommendations  
>> on their experiences with web-farm load balancers. In a previous  
>> job I'd installed and configured some Cisco ACE 4710s, and found  
>> them to be pretty solid,
> [...]
>>    • Thousands of requests/second
>
> How are you scaling the boxes you  have to this ?
>
>>    • Translation of internal NATted addresses to external real add 
>> resses (while still handling lots and lots of requests at/near wir 
>> e-speed)
>>    • SSL offloading
>>    • Content acceleration
>>    • Fault tolerance between multiple LBs
>
> I really miss the Redline Networks reverse proxies, because these  
> also made fantastic load-sharing and load-balancing boxes.  Juniper  
> bought them and binned the line.
>
> I have deployed Coyotepoint load balancers for smaller sites with  
> great success.
>
> I have deployed mod_proxy_balancer / apache based reverse proxies  
> for sites with a decent Linux-aware operational team in place with  
> great success.
>
> I really want to deploy the A10 load balancer system because they  
> have put a lot of effort into building v6 support into their  
> product, but sadly I am a terrible person because I keep forgetting  
> to return their calls.
>
> If you are dropping load balancers in to help you scale rather than  
> just for availability, then remember that there are big wins to get  
> from front-to-back - don't ignore back end improvements and leave it  
> all to the load-balancer.
>
> </brain_dump>
>
> Let is know what you go for and why.
>
> Andy
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Regards, Andy Davidson       +44 (0)20 7993 1700       www.netsumo.com
> NetSumo  Specialist networks consultancy for ISPs, Whitelabel 24/7 NOC
>
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