Clustering RHEL 5.2 Server
 

Hi

My current project environment setup is having a single server, running on RHEL 5.2, that is constantly receiving incoming data (video and text) over a periodic interval e.g. every 30 minutes.

Initial in-house testing projected the server will be generally busy, so we decided to incorporate a second server for load balancing purposes.

So now, server A and B will need to be clustered. Once that is done, incoming data will balance out between the two server (or at least that is what I will like to achieve. Note, I'm aware that at the switch side, I'll need to do some additional configuration and that part is covered).

I've been reading on Red Hat Cluster Suite and the Linux Virtual Server (LVS) seems the way to go. However, I noted that the LVS solution require at least a two-tier solution, and that would incur 3 additional servers instead of just 1.

So here's my questions:-

1. I looked around and probably know the answer, but I'm gonna ask anyway. Is there a one-tier solution for LVS i.e. have anyone tried or whether it's even feasible. From my reading, it don't seem so but just want another opinion.
2. Is there any other way for me to do the clustering (for load-balancing) without LVS?

Sidenote: I'm currently looking at Ultra Monkey and will be trying out in a while. However, the project I'm doing would be rolled out to live site eventually, and my customer is kind of....particular. I'm just wondering if there's a software/application (that need to be purchased) and comes with support.

Thanks in advance.

http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/do...tramonkey.html

Seems like Ultra Monkey also utilizes Load-Balancer servers on the front-end, with the real servers at the back-end. Again, this effectively increase my server count from 1 to 4. Is there any clustering solution for Linux that can do away with the front-end load-balancer servers??

More reading and this is what I found are more softwares like Pound, BalanceNG etc. that still require at least one front-end server as the load-balancer server to route the traffic to the two real servers; effectively needing three servers.

I thought of an idea and was wondering if its possible. I've attached the image and will explain how I perceive it to work.

1. Incoming traffic goes into the Switch to address 192.168.2.1
2. The Switch has two ports configured as EtherChannel. Basically, these two ports will work as one and the switch will load-balance all data to 192.168.2.1, which is S1 and S2.
3. At the server end, Global File System is utilized for file-sharing/sync. A SAN volume is attached to both servers using GFS.
4. Data that comes to either server will end up on the SAN volume attached.

First and foremost, is there anything wrong with the above config (see attached)?

Secondly, a thought I had is when say a large file is transferred to 192.168.2.1, the switch does load-balancing so data is transferred to S1 and S2, targetting a directory define in the attached SAN volume. Will that file be reconstructed properly?

I'm guessing not since both server NIC cards are working independently. Just like to have a confirmation since I can't actually test this.

Beside that, I'm basically dry out of ideas. Hope someone has some suggestion soon. Thanks.