|
* Daniel Burke (smstnitc@xxxxxxxxx) [020808 19:05]:
>
> --- Doug Schasteen <dschast@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Let me know your thoughts whether you've used one or not. The
> > Dell server comes with a great support / warranty, while the
> > ServerIron is used and won't have a warranty. That, and it's
> > still $400 more. But will the ease of use be worth it? Will
> > its special abilities over LVS (if they exist) be worth it?
>
> On the other hand, one of our customers has a Cisco (forget what
> it is) for hardware load balancing because they wanted our
> solution, but didn't trust the lvs to do the load balancing...
> from what I've seen, it has basically all the same capabilities,
> only less flexability in configuring (or doing it easily), at a
> higher cost... they had the same kind of arp issues, and some
> other issues with customized software that didn't want to work
> with the cisco unit (4 months later they're still fighting with
> that), but we had it tested and working with lvs before they
> decided they wanted to go with cisco...
I'll second that type of experience. Before I continue, I should
mention that since you're on the LVS list, you're likely to get
advice from those LVS biased. :-)
A former employer of mine used Cisco's LocalDirector product,
(since discontinued, I believe). We were contractually disallowed
to load test them! There was a constant battle to get/keep them
configured well.
My current employer used to use Arrowpoint (now Cisco) 150s. The
hardware reliability was awful (MTBF 6 months). When the arrowpoint
tossed up it's hands in response to a web server upgrade, I replaced
it with LVS and keepalived on PIII 600Mhz hardware. We've had our
bumps, but it's been easier to diagnose and repair.
Simply put, LVS works, and works well. Expect to spend some time
getting familiar with it (and the linux network stack and iproute2
and iptables, and tcpdump / ethereal), but it's well spent - you'll
understand *exactly* what's happening to every packet. No hand
waving. And I suspect you'll find the level of support available
here puts commercial vendors to shame.
My 0.02.
-Brad McLean
|
