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Hi Kevin,
I try to answer as much as I can.
Kevin Goddard - System Admin wrote:
>
> Unlike the subject suggests, I am not a complete Newbie, actually far from
> it. What I need, however, is basic information for LVS. Here are my
> questions, if anyone can help or point me to the answers
> I would appreciate it.
> 1. How many servers will one LVS Director support? I thought I read
> something like 8 to 1?
Actually this depends much upon the scheme you intend to use. If you are
going
to use to NAT-approach, all replies will go back through the webserver.
This needs
much more power in terms of packet handling as if you would choose to
run your
lvs-cluster with the DR (direct routing) - appoach. It also depends upon
the HW
you are going to use and upon the estimated traffic flow expected. I can
only
tell you some working models. I've got one director loadbalancing 20
machines
with different OS using DR without any CPU load-increase or bottleneck
effect.
The machine is a PII-266MHZ with 128MB RAM and a selfmade script for
maintainance.
If I remember right Michael Sparks was building up something with
hundreds of
servers, but you have to look back in the mailing list.
> 2. What is a good hardware configuration for the LVS Director? We are going
> to start off with a small web farm to see how it works out, say one LVS
> Director and three webservers.
Basically you can take any machine on which the kernel 2.2.x runs
properly,
because the service itself is not CPU consuming. The script/tool you
will
be running to better maintain the cluster will basically need some
CPU-time.
Probably you should think about memory first, if you intend to have alot
of http-traffic.
> 3. Do I need multiple ethernet cards?
Nope. Although you could handle different clusters with one
loadbalancer.
I have such a director running. It serves three clients on different
net-
entities. And therefor I need multiple cards.
> 4. Does LVS install okay on a clean install of Red Hat 6.2? If not what is
> a good version of Red Hat to use?
As far as I saw in the mailing list this should already be included and
if not I think you can easily install it on a RedHat 6.2. To be honest,
I have an own homebrew for security reasons and I patch my kernel by
hand. So I can't really tell you. But see previous messages concerning
piranha.
> 5. What are the install steps, I tried to follow through in the HOW TO but
> it seemed kind of chopy (though I may need to just try it once to get a feel
> for it).
I think there is no help for a specific distribution installation, only
base kernel patching, explanation and a big FAQ section. And I think
that stuff like piranha questions should be solved by a Howto from
RedHat.
> 6. Are there any good companys who sell web farms running LVS yet? VAR
> seemed to, but they still seem to have issues following up with potential
> customers.
What's a good company in your eyes?
> 7. Do I need to install lvs-gui before or after LVS? Does it install LVS as
> well? Again I am getting lost in some of the documentation.
This is not in the documentation and I think this should also not be
there since a lot of people write their own deamon software and
documenting
ldirectord, lvs-gui, piranha and every tool available is beyond the
scope of the Howto. I guess the gui needs to be install afterwards, but
actually it should not make a big difference. Anyway installing a
gui for something which isn't installed yet doesn't make any sense?
>
> Thanks for the quick response.
> Kevin Goddard
>
Regards,
Roberto Nibali, ratz
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