Posted by Dan Trainor on 08/30/05 00:17

Nathan Tobik wrote:
> I've never looked into some of the open-source load balancing solutions,
> but I know they exist are are out there. The F5's I mentioned are
> probably around $20k each, and you need two obviously, so if you're on a
> limited budget those are not the solution for you. I'd google for open
> source load balancer. I know OpenBSD has some failover capacity through
> something called CARP, but I'm not sure how that would work with your
> solution.
>
> Nate Tobik
> (412)661-5700 x206
> VigilantMinds
>
> .....
>
> Thanks for the reply, Nathan -
>
> Are there any such interfaces that are software-based? I think that
> Jasper's suggestion would be the most feasable, but I'd still like to
> know my options.
>
> In my mind, hardware immediately equates to $$$, whereas software
> immediately does not.
>
> Thanks
> -dant
>

Nathan -

Sure, I know of some load balancing software, but I do not know of any
that support sticky sessions out of the box.

BTW, how are these sessions passed? Is this a client-server approach,
where the LB accepts the session data and uses a proxy to forward them
to the load balanced machine, or does the load balancer do it's thing at
perhaps Layer 2, and completely forwards the connection to the LB'd server?

Thanks!
-dant

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