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Abstract Load Balancing 1

Network Load Balancing is a clustering technology included in the Windows 2000 operating system. It enhances the scalability and availability of mission-critical, TCP / IP-based services. Network load balancers scale performance by distributing client requests across multiple servers. It also ensures high availability by detecting host failures and automatically redistributing traffic.

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Naveen Abhi
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468 views

Abstract Load Balancing 1

Network Load Balancing is a clustering technology included in the Windows 2000 operating system. It enhances the scalability and availability of mission-critical, TCP / IP-based services. Network load balancers scale performance by distributing client requests across multiple servers. It also ensures high availability by detecting host failures and automatically redistributing traffic.

Uploaded by

Naveen Abhi
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Abstract

Network Load Balancing, a clustering technology included in the Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Datacenter Server operating systems, enhances the scalability and availability of mission-critical, TCP/IP-based services, such as Web, Terminal Services, virtual private networking, and streaming media servers. This component runs within cluster hosts as part of the Windows 2000 operating system and requires no dedicated hardware support. To scale performance, Network Load Balancing distributes IP traffic across multiple cluster hosts. It also ensures high availability by detecting host failures and automatically redistributing traffic to the surviving hosts. Network Load Balancing provides remote controllability and supports rolling upgrades from the Windows NT 4.0 operating system. The unique and fully distributed architecture of Network Load Balancing enables it to deliver very high performance and failover protection, especially in comparison with dispatcher-based load balancers. This white paper describes the key features of this technology and explores its internal architecture and performance characteristics in detail. Network Load Balancing provides scalability and high availability to enterprise-wide TCP/IP services, such as Web, Terminal Services, proxy, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), and streaming media services. Network Load Balancing brings special value to enterprises deploying TCP/IP services, such as e-commerce applications, that link clients with transaction applications and back-end databases. Network Load Balancing servers (also called hosts) in a cluster communicate among themselves to provide key benefits, including: Scalability: Network Load Balancing scales the performance of a server-based program, such as a Web server, by distributing its client requests across multiple servers within the cluster. As traffic increases, additional servers can be added to the cluster, with up to 32 servers possible in any one cluster. High availability: Network Load Balancing provides high availability by automatically detecting the failure of a server and repartitioning client traffic among the remaining servers within ten seconds, while providing users with continuous service. Advantages of Network Load Balancing:

1. Network Load Balancing is superior to other software solutions

such as round robin DNS (RRDNS), which distributes workload among multiple servers but does

not provide a mechanism for server availability. If a server within the host fails, RRDNS, unlike Network Load Balancing, will continue to send it work until a network administrator detects the failure and removes the server from the DNS address list. This results in service disruption for clients. 2. Network Load Balancing also has advantages over other load balancing solutionsboth hardware- and software-basedthat introduce single points of failure or performance bottlenecks by using a centralized dispatcher. . This provides significant cost savings when compared to proprietary hardware load balancing solutions. 3.The unique and fully distributed software architecture of Network Load Balancing enables it to deliver the industry's best load balancing performance and availability. The specific advantages of this architecture are described below in the "Network Load Balancing Architecture" section.

Installing and Managing Network Load Balancing Network Load Balancing is automatically installed and can be optionally enabled on the Advanced Server and Datacenter Server versions of the Windows 2000 operating system. It operates as an optional service for local area network (LAN) connections and can be enabled for one LAN connection in the system; this LAN connection is known as the cluster adapter. No hardware changes are required to install and run Network Load Balancing. Since it is compatible with almost all Ethernet and Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) network adapters, it has no specific hardware compatibility list.

Network Load Balancing Performance The performance impact of Network Load Balancing can be measured in four key areas:

CPU overhead on the cluster hosts, which is the CPU percentage required to analyze and filter network packets (lower is better). Response time to clients, which increases with the non-overlapped portion of CPU overhead, called latency (lower is better). Throughput to clients, which increases with additional client traffic that the cluster can handle prior to saturating the cluster hosts (higher is better). Switch occupancy, which increases with additional client traffic (lower is better) and must not adversely affect port bandwidth

Summary Internet technology has been widely embraced, serving as the foundation for delivering enterprise-wide and frequently mission-critical applications such as Web, streaming media, and VPN servers. As an integral part of Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Datacenter Server, Network Load Balancing provides an ideal, cost-effective solution for enhancing the scalability and high availability of these applications in both Internet and intranet contexts.

Network Load Balancing lets system administrators build clusters with up to 32 hosts among which it load-balances incoming client requests. Comments & suggestions: Signature:

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