TCP profile farms

POSTED ON 19 February, 2016
Warning! TCP profile is deprecated, please use L4xNAT profile instead

TCP EDIT GLOBAL PARAMETERS

The specific parameters for a simple TCP farm are the following:

Load Balance Algorithm. This field shows the different load balancing algorithms that are possible to be configured for the current farm. Four algorithms are available. Selecting an inappropriate algorithm for your service infrastructure could cause a lot of processor consumption over the load balancer. To apply the changes check the Modify Button and the new algorithm will be applied on line without restarting the farm.

Here you’ve a brief explanation about the available algorithms for TCP profiles.

Round Robin – equal sharing. An equal balance of traffic to all active real servers. For every incoming connection the balancer assigns the next round robin real server to deliver the request.

Hash – sticky client. The Farm will create a hash string for each IP client and send each connection from that hash to the same real server. A hash table is created with the real servers and the requests are assigned through the following algorithm:

index = cli % nServers

Where ‘index’ is the index of the real server hash table, ‘cli’ is the integer representation of the IP address and the ‘nServers’ is the number of real servers available. This algorithm is a way to create persistence through the IP address, but it’s more powerful if you’ve a variety of subnets clients accessing to your service (for example, an international service).

Weight – connection linear dispatching by weight. Balance connections depending on the weight value, you have to edit this value for each real server. The requests are delivered through an algorithm to calculate the load of every server using the actual connections to them, and then to apply a linear weight assignation.

Priority – connections to the highest priority available. Balance all connections to the same highest priority server. If this server is down, the connections switch to the next highest server. With this algorithm you can build an Active-Pasive cluster service with several real servers.

Enable client ip address persistence through memory. For every algorithm a persistence by ip address client could be configured. With this option enabled all the clients with the same ip address will be connected to the same server. A new incoming connection is delivered to the selected server by the algorithm and stored in the memory table. The next times the client will be connected, it will be delivered to this same server. This behaviour provides a basic persistency by ip address. To apply the changes you’ve to press the Modify Button and will be modified on line on the load balancer service.

Max number of clients memorized in the farm and Client-time. These values have only sense if you enable the client ip persistence. The client field is about the max number of clients that will be possible to memorize and the time value is the max time of life for this clients to be memorized (the max client age). To change these values you’ve to press the Modify Button and then the farm service will be restarted automatically.

Backend response timeout. It’s the max seconds that the real server has to respond for a request. If the backend response is too late, then the server will be marked as blacklisted. The change of this parameter is applied online for TCP profiles.

Max number of simultaneous connections for the virtual IP. It’s the max value of established connections and active clients that the virtual service will be able to manage. To change this field the farm will be restarted automatically.

Max number of real ip servers. It’s the max number of real servers that the farm will be able to have configured. To change this value the farm service will be restarted automatically.

Add X-Forwarded-For header to http requests. This option enables the HTTP header X-Forwarded-For to provide to the real server the ip client address. To change this feature will be applied online. By default is disabled.

Frecuency to check resurrected backends. This value in seconds is the period to get out a blacklisted real server and checks if is alive. Note that the backend will not be in up status until the first successful connection is done. The change of this parameter is applied online for TCP profiles.

Use farmguardian to check backend servers. Checking this box will enable a more advanced monitoring state for backends and totally personalized for your own scripts. When a problem is detected by farmguardian automatically disables the real server and will be marked as blacklisted. This is an independent service so you don’t have need to restart the farm service. To get more details about this service, please read the FarmGuardian section.

 

TCP EDIT REAL SERVERS CONFIGURATIONS

With a TCP farm, you’ll be able to configure the following properties:

Max connections. It’s the max number of concurrent connections that the current real server will be able to receive. This value must be less than the Max clients of the Global Parameters.

Weight. It’s the weight value for the current real server which is only useful if the Weight Algorithm is enabled. More weight value indicates more connections delivered to the current backend.

Priority. It’s the priority value for the current real server which is only useful if the Priority Algorithm is enabled. The priority value accepted is between 1 and 9, less value indicates more priority to the current real server.

With the Save Real Server button you’ll apply the new configuration, or you’ll be able to cancel the process through the button. A message with the result will be displayed.

Once the real server configuration is entered, you’ll be able to edit the config throught the Edit button, delete the configuration with the Delete Real Server button, enable the maintenance mode for the backend in order to stop sending requests to the current server or disable the maintenance mode for the current backend in order to start again to send requests to the seleted server.

The server index is useful to identify the real server configuration for the current farm.
The changes of the real servers configuration for the TCP profiles are applied online, and a restart action isn’t needed.

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Documentation under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

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