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Re: Recommendations for a large implementation

To: Clint Byrum <cbyrum@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Recommendations for a large implementation
Cc: lvs-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:24:02 -0800 (PST)
On Tue, 21 Feb 2006, Clint Byrum wrote:

Hello LVS users and developers. I have a situation where I'm setting up
LVS for a short term need, so let me explain.

Hi Clint,

You're a long time user of LVS. I thought you'd know all this stuff :-)

Most of us aren't real current with hardware etc. We mainly help people get setup and after that, we listen to them.

We're talking with F5 about doing a BigIP implementation, but we are on a time crunch, and know that LVS will probably get us where we want to be in the short term. So, without further ado, the questions:

- We can make all of the HTTP decisions we want at the server level using mod_proxy. However, ktcpvs can also help with these, right?

I'm not real familiar with ktcpvs. If this is the L7 code, it's not used a whole lot, the reason being that it's L7 and computationally expensive and people have found ways of handling their problems with mod_proxy etc at the L4 level. Since it's not used a whole lot, not a lot of development work goes into it, so it doesn't get used a lot (repeat). There are examples of how people have used mod_proxy etc in the HOWTO. The big ($) guys all use L7, but then you pay a lot for the software, the hardware that is needed and the nice user interface. A lot of people don't mind spending the money. Presumably LVS would be a lot better off competing head to head with the big $ if the L7 code was a bigger part of LVS, but then most of us don't have the hardware to handle it.

- Ok this is highly subjective, I know.. but how does LVS fare against the BigIP-1500. Anybody replaced one with the other?

No personal experience, but listening to posters it seems to be

Professional load balancers:

chosen by people in suits with lots of money and who don't want to deal with technical problems. The user interface, the large amount of hardware, and the large cost impresses visitors (who are suits themselves) brought in by the suits, who all go "oooooh - you guys really know what you're doing". Although people on this list have replaced the big iron with LVS and been much happier with the result, I went to a talk by a load balancer company recently to find that they have an end-to-end solution that you manage through a GUI and you don't have to know anything about tcpip etc.
LVS doesn't have any of that.

LVS:

Chosen when technical people make the decisions in places with little money and relatively large amounts of time to set it up and look after it.

What's spamaps all about?

Joe

--
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!

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