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Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

amahfouz

amahfouzJun 09, 2006 04:21 PM

soudertech

soudertechAug 11, 2008 02:58 PM

  • 1.  Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 05, 2006 07:32 AM

    http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/300

    A tiny but mighty tcp load balancer



  • 2.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 08, 2006 12:59 AM

    Will be very interested to know whether this appliance can also load balance the traffic to different IP address in a subnet (some kind of bandwidth control needed in every family when kids are competing for ADSL bandwidth for his/her own downloading's/peer to peer sharing)?



  • 3.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 08, 2006 09:08 AM

    This appliance uses Pen for the load balancing. Pen doesnt have a bandwidth control or traffic shaping feature. Sorry !!

    Thanks for trying it out ...



  • 4.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Dec 08, 2009 01:57 PM

    Hi,

    Does anyone have any info on how many concurrent users can connect with Hercules?

    thanks,

    Please respond with this email address: louis.frati@kaman.com

    thanks,

    Lou Frati



  • 5.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 08, 2006 02:11 PM

    Very interesting appliance. I am familair with Cisco's Load Director which costs serious money. This seems like a great alternative for smaller installations and setups and testing. good work :smileyhappy:



  • 6.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 08, 2006 03:32 PM

    Thanks for trying out hercules ...



  • 7.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 03, 2008 06:56 PM

    prabhakar,

    Thank you for putting this appliance together! Nothing like installing a redundant, load shared infrastructure in under an hour.

    Now for some testing. While I can see that taking down one VM (or just dropping pen on the primary vrrp node), things failover to the other hercules node just fine... I'd like a way to check the status of the active vrrpd & pen services. Doesn't seem to be much available from the /bin/pen & /sbin/vrrpd commands. I guess I'll have to go read docs or something :smileywink:

    Cheers!

    Edit: I just found penctl, and that helps. I then compiled pen on one of my network management boxes and can use penctl.cgi to remotely monitor pen's status.



  • 8.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 28, 2008 12:46 PM

    Thanks for this.

    Great Virtual Appliance :smileyhappy:



  • 9.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 04, 2009 08:02 PM

    Can anyone tell me how of if I can configure penctl.cgi in Hercules . I want to be able to control it throuh a web based ui but I dont see any documentation on how to configure penctl.cgi.

    Has anyone done this?



  • 10.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 09, 2009 04:34 PM

    question for hicksj.....how did you set up penctl.cgi on a Hercules appliance ? Where do I get it and where do I put it?



  • 11.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 10, 2009 12:39 PM

    @jwstern - I downloaded pen and compiled it on a separate linux server, one that I was already using for various network management/monitoring functions. Then I placed the penctl.cgi in that management server's cgi-bin directory... also needed to mod the PENCTL path definition at the top of penctl.cgi.

    To keep the appliance small, the author stripped out any ability to compile tools like this on the Hercules box itself.

    One thing you need to be careful with, there doesn't appear to be any authentication... at least not that I've found - but I haven't looked hard either. Its security by obscurity at this point. If anyone knows the management ip/port, they can use penctl to manage the settings.



  • 12.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 29, 2008 04:31 AM

    Prabhakar - Great virtual appliance - are there any plans on updating kernel, etc. or is this project mothballed?



  • 13.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Dec 04, 2009 08:31 PM

    Hi,

    I did not see an answer to maximum connections for Hercules Load Balancer, could someone answer this for me?

    thanks,

    Lou



  • 14.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 08, 2006 10:47 PM

    good work on making the download so small. I notice you have a number of tiny single purpose VMs, but none of them seem to have a UI. If you're interested I would like to help you fix this.

    check out the whiptail menus in my appliance http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/329 I think we could put together something similar for your appliances.



  • 15.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 09, 2006 12:11 AM

    I saw that. I think we could put something together. I didnt use a UI because they are all so targeted to dev and server side. I spent a lot of time trying to get it to be a small download. Good work on the phplix appliance...



  • 16.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 09, 2006 04:21 PM

    Terrific concept. good work



  • 17.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 09, 2006 08:46 PM

    Something different. Tiny and nice. Kind of getting tired of all the heavy duty large apps .



  • 18.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 09, 2006 09:37 PM

    This seems to be the smallest appliance in this list. Good work.



  • 19.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 09, 2006 11:01 PM

    Too bad it's using an ide disk. It won't run on esx server.

    Lars



  • 20.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 26, 2006 04:36 PM

    Too bad it's using an ide disk. It won't run on esx

    server.

    Lars

    I agree - Would it be easy to port it over to a SCSI Drive? I have had some trouble getting linux based VMs from IDE to scsi successfully.

    CARLO.



  • 21.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 26, 2006 09:50 PM

    it shouldnt be hard to switch to SCSI. I am planning on updating this vm. i will post the updated vm on SF and post here.



  • 22.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 28, 2006 02:50 PM

    Here are the minimum requirements for the VM's kernel to work with SCSI (and networking)... Hope this helps :smileyhappy:

    Device Drivers --->

    Fusion MPT device support --->

    <*> Fusion MPT (base + ScsiHost) drivers

    OR

    <*> Fusion MPT ScsiHost drivers for SPI \[kernel 2.6.x or better]

    Device Drivers --->

    SCSI device support --->

    <*> SCSI device support

    <*> SCSI disk support

    SCSI low-level drivers --->

    <*> SYM53C8XX Version 2 SCSI support

    <*> BusLogic SCSI support

    Device Drivers --->

    Network Device support --->

    Network device support

    Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit) --->

    Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit)

    EISA, VLB, PCI and on board controllers

    <*> AMD PCnet32 PCI support

    Ethernet (1000Mbit) --->

    Intel(R) PRO/1000 Gigabit Ethernet support



  • 23.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 28, 2006 10:52 PM

    thanks Matt. This would be a great start....



  • 24.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 28, 2006 03:06 PM

    Good job btw. I am also trying to learn how to use buildroot so I can make my own footprints, but am stumbling around in the dark. The only modifications I would make to Hercules would be to add vrrpd for redundant load balancers and also the scsi support, then I can test it out with ESX server.

    http://siag.nu/pen/vrrpd-linux.shtml



  • 25.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 28, 2006 10:55 PM

    Buildroot has its own idiosyncracies, but works very well for the most part. It is also simple enough to add other packages to the buildroot system. I am planning on upgrading hercules to scsi soon ( a bit slammed for time right now). Thanks for trying it out and for your comments.

    cheers



  • 26.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 05, 2006 01:19 PM

    Nice job. Did you look at any of the other open source balancers out there apart from pen?



  • 27.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 05, 2006 08:42 PM

    I looked at several others, but pen was the one I liked most in terms of features and ease of use. It also has a great mailing list.

    Thanks for trying out hercules ...



  • 28.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 12, 2006 08:20 PM

    Nice appliance. We use HAProxy but this seems like a great fit for smaller installations.



  • 29.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2006 08:58 PM

    Here is an http download for those of you having problems with the torrents:

    http://www.orbitfiles.com/download/id185891325

    Let me know if you have problems accessing it. Thanks ...



  • 30.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 11, 2008 02:55 PM

    Prabhakar,

    Can this vm be optimized to run as a vm? We have a small load balancing project that we need up and going by next week - can you offer any fee based help?



  • 31.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 23, 2006 09:19 PM

    Here is yet another http link, in case your fw is blocking traffic to orbitfiles:

    http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170938&package_id=195195



  • 32.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 26, 2006 04:32 PM

    WOW....good work and great documentation.....



  • 33.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 28, 2008 03:55 PM

    I am unable to download from the appliance site. How do we obtain a copy of this?



  • 34.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 28, 2008 04:06 PM

    Check the earlier post (Page 1-2). The author posted some links there.



  • 35.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 05, 2006 09:33 PM

    Tried this appliance on Workstation works great!!!!! Got it running in 2 minutes. I would like to use this appliance for a project in about a month, would be great to have that ESX image.

    Thanks for the great work!!!!

    Chris



  • 36.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2006 02:45 PM

    Thanks for trying out Hercules and for your comments. several users have mentioned that they would like an ESX image. I am going to create an updated appliance with the very latest and greatest kernel - 2.6.17.3 and a SCSI vmdisk this weekend. Stay tuned and dont forget to vote for hercules :smileyhappy:

    thanks



  • 37.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2006 03:53 PM

    prabhakar,

    If you take your old hercules kernel configuration (copy over the .config and make oldconfig) then do a make menuconfig and add in the scsi options I posted earlier, and finally compile with uclibc, you will be good.

    The easiest thing to do is just mount your current rootfs, and copy it over onto a mounted scsi virtual disk, install grub on the new disk... etc.

    I did that, and added vrrpd for redundancy, and it definitely worked. However, it wasn't with the latest and greatest 2.6.17.3, so give that one a shot. Also if you need any help let me know, I would be happy to help you, but I'm sure you can handle it.

    Thanks again!

    Matt



  • 38.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 02:34 AM

    Matt

    Created a new SCSI virtual disk, and booted up with the latest kernel 2.6.17.3 with the settings from the posting. Everything seems fine and boots up. But looking at the kernel messages, I see these errors from the LSILogic SCSI adapter:

    sda: asking for cache data failed

    sda: assuming drive cache: write through

    Do you get the same errors. BTW, are using a 2.6 kernel. Because of this error, when I do a df, the scsi disk does not show up...

    thanks



  • 39.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 12:58 PM

    Prabhakar,

    I also have those messages when I do dmesg | grep sda. I didn't notice them at first. Other than those messages, everything appears to be functioning correctly. I am currently looking into it.

    \[I used 2.6.12.6 because for some reason I thought the kernel had to be the same as the version I used for the headers in buildroot (and those were buildroot's most up to date available headers). However, I guess any 2.6 headers I chose would work with a kernel so long as it was the same version or newer.]



  • 40.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 01:05 PM

    By the way... to fix the df problem, do

    mknod /dev/sda b 8 0

    you can add it to device_table.txt (at least that's what i recall it being called) in your buildroot directory. that way you won't have to do this step over in future builds.

    this problem is unrelated to our kernel warning messages



  • 41.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 02:33 PM

    That was it. I had forgotten to add the device node for the scsi device. Thanks for the tip. I also tried the kernel with a buslogic scsi virtual disk. Same error message in the kernel log. BTW, this message could only be when we are running the appliance in workstation. ESX server may still be fine.



  • 42.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 02:40 PM

    That is funny, I was just thinking the same thing. I will try to try it out on ESX server later today if I get a chance.



  • 43.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2006 03:56 PM

    Does anyone know how to set the configuration file to load balance both port 80 and 25?

    Thanks,

    Chris



  • 44.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2006 04:04 PM

    Chris,

    http://siag.nu/pen/howto.shtml

    I am pretty sure you can have two instances of pen running at a time, so if you know how to do it for one instance on one port, you should be able to do it for two separate instances each using a different port... you would have to edit /etc/init.d/pen a little bit if you wanted it to work on boot.



  • 45.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2006 08:04 PM

    Does anyone have a sample startup script to start pen for two services, I have two web/smtp servers I want to load balance to?

    Thanks for everyone's help.

    Chris



  • 46.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2006 08:56 PM

    I dont know if you can do it from one pen script. You could do it by starting two pen processes, each with its own script - /etc/init.d/pen-http and /etc/init.d/pen-smtp. Hope that helps. I checked out the pen mailing lists too, but no one seems to be trying this kind of a config.



  • 47.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2006 09:20 PM

    Well, I rewritten roughly the initial startup script to the one below, and got it to work, I can telnet both to http and smtp successfully on both servers.

    Thanks,

    Chris

    login as: root

    root@172.16.0.194's password:

    BusyBox v1.2.0-pre0 (2006.05.23-01:14+0000) Built-in shell (ash)

    Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

    \[root@hercules] # cd /etc/init.d

    \[root@hercules] \[init.d]# vi pen

    #!/bin/sh

    #

    \# startup script for pen

    \# pchaganti@gmail.com

    PIDFILE=/var/run/pen.pid

    PIDFILE2=/var/run/pen2.pid

    CONTROLPORT=8888

    CONTROLPORT2=8889

    CHROOTDIR=/chroot/pen

    LBSERVER=www

    LBSERVER2=25

    SERVER1=192.168.25.107

    SERVER2=192.168.25.110

    case "$1" in

    start)

    if \[ -x /bin/pen ] ; then

    echo -n "Starting pen: "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT -X -p $PIDFILE $LBSERVER $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo "OK"

    fi

    if \[ -x /bin/pen ] ; then

    echo -n "Starting pen: "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT2 -X -p $PIDFILE2 172.16.0.194:25 $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo "OK"

    fi

    ;;

    stop)

    kill `cat /var/run/pen.pid`

    kill 'cat /var/run/pen2.pid'

    ;;

    *)

    echo "usage: $0 \{ start | stop }" >&2

    exit 1

    ;;

    esac



  • 48.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2006 11:52 PM

    Very cool. Glad it worked for you and thanks for posting the script...



  • 49.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 15, 2006 05:03 AM

    HI Prabhakar,

    Your appliance has loaded ok.

    I have read some of your posts trying to find out this info, but till page 5 there is noone else who had this startup problem.

    As a linux Newbie I am trying to learn by using your appliance.

    I tried accessing the help page as said on the boot screen at http://127.0.0.1 but it does not take root as the password?

    Please help me get started, I am also a newbie to all things Linux, so please dont mind me asking stupid questions as I am not a developer. I am only a windows user.

    Thanx in advance,

    Jayant



  • 50.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 15, 2006 11:18 AM

    The help page does not need a password. The root/root is for logging in to the appliance at the console. Does that help?

    thanks



  • 51.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 15, 2006 11:31 AM

    Also you need a dhcp server that hands out ip addresses on your network. The appliance uses a bridged network connection with DHCP, so when it starts up it sends out a request for an ip address. Are you trying this on a standalone machine?

    -prabhakar



  • 52.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 17, 2006 10:43 AM

    I have already had a request to update from 2.6.17.3 to the latest version. Linus seems to have released three updates in 10 days. I will update this appliance from 2.6.17.3 to the latest kernel and post it on sf this week.

    thanks for trying out hercules ...

    -prabhakar



  • 53.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 19, 2006 10:40 PM

    Here is an article about load balancing mongrel clusters using Pen. Substitute Hercules for Pen in the article and you have a nice and nifty solution:

      http://www.brainspl.at/articles/tag/pen

    Mongrel is a super fast http server in Ruby, that is fast becoming a deployment option for Rails apps. Check it out.

    -prabhakar



  • 54.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 20, 2006 06:11 PM

    Not to rush you, but would it be possible for u to post the appliance with the updated kernel before next week? We would like to use the load balancer along with the cache appliance in our app architecture next week. We will be testing it initially inhouse before moving it onto the production servers. Once again thanks for the hard work and a nice appliance. I posted over in the other forum too. :smileyhappy:

    cheers



  • 55.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 21, 2006 10:57 AM

    Will update it and post it over the weekend.

    -prabhakar



  • 56.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 24, 2006 10:27 AM

    Updated the appliance to use the latest kernel -[b]2.6.17.6[/b].

    You can download it from :

      http://istanbul.sourceforge.net.

    -prabhakar

    Message was edited by:

    prabhakar



  • 57.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 25, 2006 03:53 PM

    Thanks for posting the update. Will kick the tires on it in our project.

    -alef



  • 58.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 26, 2006 02:26 PM

    Thanks a lot. Appreciate the effort.

    cheers



  • 59.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 28, 2006 01:50 AM

    You are welcome. Let me know if you run into any issues. Once again, thanks for trying out hercules.

    -prabhakar



  • 60.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 01, 2006 03:11 PM

    Congratulations!



  • 61.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 01, 2006 03:21 PM

    Appreciate your feedback. A big thanks to all the users who downloaded the appliance, and tried it out. I will post the stats on the total downloads later today.

    -prabhakar

    Message was edited by:

    prabhakar



  • 62.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 01, 2006 08:31 PM

    Here is a rough estimate of the stats as of this morning on the downloads of this appliance collected from MY[/b] bittorrent seeding and sourceforge. These DO NOT include downloads/torrents from Vmware.[/b]

    \----


    Downloads via torrent : 239

    Downloads from SF : 65

    Total Downloads : 304

    Number of Votes : 148

    Percent of downloads that voted : 48.68 %

    \----


    -prabhakar



  • 63.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 02, 2006 10:44 AM

    Here are the stats including appliances downloaded from VMware. Thanks to Brady Miller for pointing me to the vmware torrents stats page.

    \----


    Downloads via torrent from VMware: 650

    Downloads via torrent from me: 239

    Downloads from SF : 65

    Total Downloads : 954

    Number of Votes : 148

    Percent of downloads that voted : 15.51 %

    \----


    -prabhakar



  • 64.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 06:55 PM

    Does anyone know the maximum ammount of connections this virtual appliance can handle?

    Thanks again,

    Chris



  • 65.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 07:10 PM

    I dont know of a maximum number of connections. What kind of a load are you trying?



  • 66.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 07:51 PM

    prabhakar,

    I tried our vm kernel settings on ESX Server 2.... Same results as workstaion.

    Have you tried google.com/linux ?

    I am busy now but I will look around later too.



  • 67.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 07, 2006 08:55 PM

    I will poke around too and see if I can figure it out.

    thx



  • 68.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 08, 2006 12:41 AM

    Looks like the message may not really be an error. It is using write through cache instead of write back cache. Here is a semi explanation on the poweredge mailing list:

      http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2006-March/025014.html

    I have the appliance ready with 2.6.17.3 kernel, scsi virtual disk and vrrpd. If you are fine with the message in the kernel logs, I will post the appliance to SF and you can download it from there.



  • 69.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 08, 2006 03:28 AM

    prabhakar

    I agree, it is not really an error. According to that link, "write through" appears to even be safer since a machine can fail with no data loss.

    One thing I would keep in mind before posting your build to sourceforge is that your intended audience for this release is ESX users. Most users probably have ESX 2 since Infrastructure 3 is still new. In workstation 5.? when you create a new VM you need to choose "custom->legacy" for the vm to work with ESX 2. To work with ESX 3 do non-legacy.

    What I'm trying to say is that you might want to either release 1.) the new hercules as a legacy VM, or 2.) release two versions (one legacy + one new with no other differences).

    If you only want one release, do the legacy version since users can always "upgrade" their VM, however they cannot "downgrade" it to work if they're using ESX 2.

    Good work!

    Matt



  • 70.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 08, 2006 10:40 AM

    Not a problem. I will go ahead and create two versions - one for ESX2 and ESX3. I will post here once I get it up on SF.



  • 71.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 09, 2006 05:09 AM

    Thanks for the terrific work. Looking forward to the new images.

    -joe



  • 72.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 11, 2006 04:06 PM

    Hi Parbhakar, et al,

    we're looking to migrate from our two F5 Big IP LBs, to something like Hercules.

    Is there a VM build with vrrpd included?

    Also, once testing has been approved with Hercules VM, how can one migrate to a physical boot image?

    Cheers,

    Tony.



  • 73.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 09, 2006 03:10 PM

    Thanks Parbhakar, this was the answer to my testing prayers.

    One question though.

    I want to test load balance a couple of vpn appliances, and its seems that I can use a command line to tell pen to use a PEM style certificate. I can't however, see an easy way of uploading the cert to the box?

    I'm not that familiar with linux, but it doesnt look like I can use ftp...is there any way of doing this (uucp, rcp?)

    Thanks...you get my vote :smileyhappy:



  • 74.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 09, 2006 04:27 PM

    The appliance has all the tools from the ssh suite available. So you can use scp to securely copy files. All you need is the computer that you created the cert on has ssh tools available too. Almost all linux dists will come with ssh preinstalled. On windows, you can either use Putty or cygwin. Here's how you can do it:

    From the machine that you created the certificate, run these commands:

    1. If you are using ssh tools from either linux or cygwin on win:

      cd directory_with_cert

      scp cert_name root@hercules_ip:dir_you_want_to_copy_cert_to

    2. If you are using Putty in windows:

      cd directory_with_cert

      pscp.exe cert_name root@hercules_ip:dir_you_want_to_copy_cert_to

    Hope that helps. Let me know if that doesnt work for you or if you need more help.

    Big thanks for trying out Hercules and for voting :smileyhappy:

    Message was edited by:

    prabhakar



  • 75.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 10, 2006 02:15 AM

    I have created and uploaded new images for both ESX2 and ESX3:

      Updated to latest kernel 2.6.17.3

      Updated to use SCSI virtual disk

      Added vrrpd package to provide failover support.

    A big thanks to Matt Ghantous for his help with the ESX images.

    You can download these versions from:

      http://istanbul.sourceforge.net

    Here is a link to a doc describing how to use vrrpd:

      http://siag.nu/pen/vrrpd-linux.shtml

    Enjoy :smileyhappy:

    Message was edited by:

    prabhakar



  • 76.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 10, 2006 03:50 PM

    Thanks for the updates, particluarly the legacy ESX2 image. Good job.

    .



  • 77.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 10, 2006 05:34 PM

    You are welcome. Thanks for trying it out ...



  • 78.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 11, 2006 02:50 PM

    Here is a nice article on scaling your web apps. I originally posted this in the hermes forum. This one is from a Ruby on Rails perspective and uses memcached for caching and HAproxy for load balancing. You could replace HAproxy in the picture with hercules load balancer appliance and use hermes appliance for memcached functionality :smileyhappy:

     http://poocs.net/articles/2006/03/13/the-adventures-of-scaling-stage-1

    enjoy :smileyhappy:



  • 79.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 11, 2006 04:12 PM

    Hi Parbhakar, et al,

    we're looking to migrate from our two F5 Big IP LBs, to something that's easy like your Hercules package.

    Is there a VM, (not ESX), build with vrrpd included? I need to test failover.

    Also, since I'm not a Linux/Unix guru, once testing has been approved with Hercules VM, how can I migrate to a physical boot image? Is an install CD available? or do I need to compile all packages myself?

    Any help or advise is appreciated.

    Cheers,

    Tony.



  • 80.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 11, 2006 05:03 PM

    You can use the updated images I previously posted at the following url.

      http://istanbul.sourceforge.net/

    Are you going to test in Workstation, Player, GSX or ESX?

    \--- The ESX2 image will work only in the legacy vmware apps - ESX2, GSX3,ACE 1.x, Workstation 4.x. You can run this image in Workstation 5 too, it will run in legacy mode.

    \--- The ESX3 image will work only in the latest generation vmware apps-Workstation 5, ESX3, Player.

    Both of these builds have vrrpd included.

    Once your testing is approved, we will need to build a boot image or an install cd. I can help you with that when you get to that stage.

    thanks for trying out hercules ...



  • 81.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 12, 2006 10:30 PM

    Thanks for this appliance. We have an existing Django app and would like to use this appliance with it. Do you any of you guys know how to do this?

    brian



  • 82.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 13, 2006 12:28 AM

    You need to use Hercules in front of your webserver - Apache, lighttpd, mongrel etc. Django is just a webapp framework that runs in the web server. It is unaware of the balancer in front of it.



  • 83.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 13, 2006 01:00 AM

    One other thing. Here is a link that details the things that you can do with django in order to improve performance.

      http://www.jacobian.org/2005/dec/12/django-performance-tips/

    BTW, the memcached referred to in this link can be provided by the Hermes appliance. So do check it out :smileyhappy:

     http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/384

    HTH

    prabhakar



  • 84.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 13, 2006 09:05 PM

    hi

    thanks for the reply. how do i use the other appliance with django?



  • 85.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 14, 2006 10:55 AM

    i posted a reply for you in the Hermes forum.

    thanks



  • 86.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 13, 2006 08:23 PM

    Is vrrpd package no built into your kernel 2.6.17.7 release? I might be crazy, but I can't find it on there any where..... definatly not in /bin

    never mind it's in /sbin I was reading the post and someone made a script poitning to /bin.....sorry

    Message was edited by:

    vmmeup



  • 87.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 07, 2006 04:00 PM

    Hi,

    I've grabbed the latest build. It starts fine in Workstation5.

    Can someone post the correct pen startup script for load balancing two https servers please?

    I tried editing /etc/init.d/pen to:

    LOGFILE=/var/log/pen.log

    PIDFILE=/var/run/pen.pid

    CONTROLPORT=8888

    CHROOTDIR=/chroot/pen

    SERVER1=192.168.0.10:443

    SERVER2=192.168.0.11:443

    ...

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT -X -l $LOGFILE -p $PIDFILE $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    ...

    But it doesn't seem to work?

    Thanks.



  • 88.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 07, 2006 06:44 PM

    is the load balancer on SERVER1?

    The first server should always be the load balancer. and the next two should be the target hosts, as in

    pen -l pen443.log -p pen443.pid -h lbhost:443[/b] host1:443 host2:443

    (note you can also leave out lbhost and just put the port number you want to be listening on)

    so in your case you probably would want a setup like:

    LOGFILE=/var/log/pen.log

    PIDFILE=/var/run/pen.pid

    CONTROLPORT=8888

    CHROOTDIR=/chroot/pen

    LBSERVER=192.168.0.9:443 # Load Balancer IP and Port, alternatively just put in the port

    SERVER1=192.168.0.10:443

    SERVER2=192.168.0.11:443

    ...

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT -X -l $LOGFILE -p $PIDFILE $LBSERVER $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    ...

    Then when you point your browser at 192.168.0.9:443 the load balancer should choose SERVER1 or SERVER2

    If you're still having trouble see http://siag.nu/pen/howto.shtml



  • 89.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 12:18 AM

    Hi Pencer,

    Like matt has said, the first server is always the load balancer and you can specify your two servers and ports after that. You can also just specify the port and leave out the load balancer server address. Try this:

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT -X -l $LOGFILE -p $PIDFILE 443[/b] $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    That should work. Let us know if you still have problems trying to get it to work.

    -prabhakar



  • 90.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 09:38 AM

    Thanks for the help. It's obvious now you say it but i'd totally missed the point of putting the LB server IP in!

    It still doesn't work for me, but I think that's down to the appliances I'm trying to balance, we have two Citrix Access Gateways.

    If in my browser (IE or FF) I type 192.168.0.10:443 for CAG1 I get a page cannot be displayed error. If I type in https://192.168.0.10 or https://192.168.0.10:443 it displays the login page.

    So when I browse to 192.168.0.9:443 (my LB server) i get the same page cannot be displayed error as above?



  • 91.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 10:35 AM

    If you do not specify the protocol as https, IE or FF will try to load the specified url as a plain http url, but at the port 443 as you specified in the URL. That wont work, and you will get a page not found error. So if you type in [b]https://192.168.0.9[/b][/u], you should get the login page from the CAG.

    -prabhakar



  • 92.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 12:42 PM

    Thanks for the help. I noticed just after I'd posted that there was a missing ; from my script after I'd edited it. One day i'll get the hang of vi!

    Anyway, it all works fine now.

    Would anyone like to help me set up vrrpd?

    I've looked on http://siag.nu/pen/vrrpd-linux2.shtml, just not sure how to set additional IP's for each LB server before I start vrrpd.



  • 93.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 01:02 PM

    Well there are probably hundreds of ways this could be done more elegantly, but this is how I set up vrrpd:

    Edit /etc/init.d/pen on both load balancers

    VIRTUAL_ADDR="192.168.0.30"

    .....

    start)

    /bin/vrrpd -n -i eth0 -v 1 $VIRTUAL_ADDR

    .....

    stop)

    killall vrrpd

    ......

    Now you got two loadbalancers listening on virtual address 192.168.0.30. If one goes down, not an issue, you have fail over! So now you have failover at the load balancer level as well as failover at your host server level. Call that paranoia! But if your services need to be 24/7 it is just an extra measure of reliability.

    \- Matt

    PS.

    vi and vim (Vi-Improved) are almost completely different editors. Prabhakar probably put vi in the distro because it is a smaller package, and suitable to fit our needs. If you are looking for a good editor with syntax highlighting for just about everything, you should take a look at vim. It runs on Windows as well. Vim is a pain to learn at first, but most people who learn it never switch back.

    Message was edited by:

    Matt Ghantous



  • 94.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 01:44 PM

    I added vi to the appliance as it is a very small package that is ideal when you are trying to save space, and it does its job very well. But Vim is what you should really use for editing. The new version has a tabbed interface and autocomplete. It is very nice. Takes some getting used to, but will be very worthwile.

    :smileyhappy:

    -prabhakar



  • 95.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 02:27 PM

    I'm nearly there!

    I've put the following in both my LB's pen scripts:

    ...

    VSERVER=192.168.0.30

    ...

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT -X -l $LOGFILE -p $PIDFILE $LBSERVER $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    /sbin/vrrpd -n -i eth0 -v 1 $VSERVER

    After vrrpd is started on either/both servers I can ping 192.168.0.30 but when I browse to https://192.168.0.30 I get a page cannot be displayed error?



  • 96.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 02:33 PM

    in the line

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT -X -l $LOGFILE -p $PIDFILE $LBSERVER $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    try just putting 443 (no ip) for $LBSERVER and see if that works... I think it should.



  • 97.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 02:50 PM

    Thats done the trick. Thanks to Matt and prabhakar for all your help.

    My first virtual clustered load balanced appliances will soon be serving our NHS trust staff!



  • 98.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 08, 2006 02:55 PM

    Very cool.

    -prabhakar



  • 99.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 09, 2006 11:09 AM

    Updated the appliance to use the latest kernel - 2.6.17.7 .

    You can download it from :

    http://istanbul.sourceforge.net.

    -prabhakar



  • 100.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 02, 2006 11:58 PM

    I have the two of the latest release running in VMWare Server on W2k as fault tolerant load balancers for several web server appliances and it is working great.

    Where can I edit the text that is displayed at the end of the boot sequence, just before the login prompt? I would like to edit the instructions there, as they are incorrect in my configuration. I would also like to add some additional text.

    Thanks for your help! Keep up the great work.



  • 101.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 03, 2006 02:55 PM

    I think you want to edit /etc/issue



  • 102.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 03, 2006 07:02 PM

    Thanks, that helps. What I really want to edit is the text that says "You can access the help page that details......". I thought I saw the file when I was poking around, but can't seem to find it now.



  • 103.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 08, 2006 06:46 PM

    Well what happens is /etc/init.d/S99helpmsg gets executed last (hence 99) and that finally execute /bin/hercules which echos out "You can access the help page that details......"

    So two possible options for you are:

    1.) rm /etc/init.d/S99* and then edit /etc/issue

    2.) edit /bin/hercules



  • 104.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 13, 2006 01:12 AM

    Hello,

    I've downloaded the Hercules-1.3-esx3.zip from the sourceforge site and started it up.

    I saw mention of vrrpd being added to it but it does not appear to be present in the /bin directory.

    Where would I find vrrpd?

    Regards



  • 105.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 25, 2006 03:52 PM

    The vrrpd binary is not in the bin folder. It is probably in one of the sbin folders. I am not at my laptop right now, but i will check and let you know for sure.



  • 106.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 25, 2006 03:55 PM

    Apologies for the delay in replying to some of the recent postings. I have been very busy with work, as we have a major release in two weeks, and a trade show demo. I am planning on updating the hercules and hermes appliances, and also have some other ideas for enhancements to them.

    thanks for checking out these appliances and for your feedback.

    -prabhakar



  • 107.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 15, 2006 06:54 PM

    Does anyone know the connection limit to hercules, also does anyone also know if hercules creates log files which might max out the hard drive?

    Thanks in advance.

    Chris



  • 108.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 25, 2006 04:15 PM

    I am not aware of any connection limit. There are log files that are created in /var/log, but i have not run into the case where they become large enough to max out the hard drive.



  • 109.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 26, 2006 12:43 PM

    Prabhakar, good working with you and congrats on the Honorable Mention Status for Hercules and the Communitiy Choice Prize for Hermes. I'll have to check that one out!



  • 110.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 26, 2006 04:12 PM

    Thank you Matt. And a big thanks for your help in the esx versions.

    -prabhakar



  • 111.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 06, 2006 02:53 PM

    Has anyone got Hercules balancing Microsoft IIS servers? If so, what is your setup?

    Doing an official test with Hercules in our data center!

    Here's my setup with 4 virtual machines on ESX 3:

    LB01 and LB02 sharing a VRRP IP address to balance two IIS web servers, WEBSERVER01 and WEBSERVER02.

    I got that going and I hope to have WEBSERVER01 and WEBSERVER02 serving web content from same physical volume on our SAN.

    Kind of fumbling around in the darnkess with the windoze stuff and trying to mirror IIS, but I'll let you know how it goes! :smileyhappy:



  • 112.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 08, 2006 07:32 PM

    Havent worked much with IIS, and everytime I did work with it, it was extremely frustrating. So i havent tried any of this with IIS. But you seem to be making great progress, and we would love to hear how your experiments go.

    :smileyhappy:

    prabhakar



  • 113.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 12, 2006 10:59 PM

    I might sound like an idiot asking this question, but what is the proper syntax for assigning a static IP to this appliance. I see the /etc/network/interface config file. The default is dhcp. I want to change it to static, but I want to make suer I use the right syntax. I generally use redhat, fedora, or suse which has a different style interface configuration. Would I just do something like this:

    iface eth0 inet 192.168.1.x 255.255.255.0

    also I'm looking to dual home the box and I added a second NIC, but the os isn't picking it up for me to use. Suggestions on what I need to do?

    Message was edited by:

    vmmeup



  • 114.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 13, 2006 12:40 PM

    Here's an example of /etc/network/interfaces with a static IP for eth0:

    iface eth0 inet static

     address 192.168.1.123

     netmask 255.255.255.0

     gateway 192.168.1.1

    then run /etc/init.d/network restart



  • 115.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2007 04:09 PM

    I preformed the steps outlined to set a static IP. Restart the network. Even rebooted the VM. I can not ping the VM. Any thoughts?

    Tried to ping from the Hercules VM, recieved the following:

    PING 172.18.18.1 (172.18.18.1): 56 data bytes

    ping: sendto: Network is unreachable.

    My config in interfaces looks like this:

    iface eth0 inet static

    address 172.18.18.228

    netmask 255.255.255.0

    gateway 172.18.18.1

    Message was edited by:

    Sean Cottrell



  • 116.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2007 05:19 PM

    Make sure you have the correct gateway and netmask.

    Did DHCP work? If it does, what does ifconfig say when you are connected with a DHCP address?

    If this is a networking problem it may be in the scope of another forum.



  • 117.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2007 05:41 PM

    Weird, I changed it back to DHCP, ping worked. Chenaged it back to static, now Ping works.

    Thanks for the Help. Now to configure pen....



  • 118.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jan 15, 2008 01:36 PM

    Hi Sean,

    I have a similar (may be the same) problem.

    It seems as if there is a BUG in static IP assignment process. You can not set a default gateway while booting.

    Check your console messages for something like that:

    route: SIOC[ADD|DEL]RT: File exists

    and you can check with netstat -rn if the default gw was set.

    Cheers,

    Arne



  • 119.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Feb 04, 2008 12:57 PM

    I have the appliance running as per Hoppa66 instructions and all seems fine, apart from it not keeping the static IP address on reboot.

    I have set this up to run as a load balancer for 2 proxy servers, but all my traffic still wants to go to one server, is there any way that this can be changed and actually force the balance between the two servers.

    Cheers



  • 120.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Mar 06, 2008 02:09 PM

    I have been trying to download this appliance for a couple of days now with no success. There are no seeders for it. Can anyone here email it to me? My email is stevent76@gmail.com. Thanks in advance.



  • 121.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Apr 12, 2008 04:34 PM

    @stevent77: I think he posted a direct link to the app download (as well as ESX versions) about 5 posts down on the first page of this thread, so you don't have to user torrent. Hope that helps.



  • 122.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Mar 25, 2009 01:42 PM

    quote"

    It seems as if there is a BUG in static IP assignment process. You can not set a default gateway while booting.

    Check your console messages for something like that:

    route: SIOC[ADD|http://communities.vmware.com/community-document-picker.jspa?communityID=&subject=DEL]RT: File exists

    and you can check with netstat -rn if the default gw was set."

    does anyone know if there's a workaround for this bug as using DHCP will cause me issues and I'm seeing the "forgotten" default gateway bug.

    thanks

    steve



  • 123.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 20, 2009 06:55 PM

    Can you use this to load balance microsoft terminal servers (RDP 3389)? Has anyone done this?



  • 124.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 22, 2009 03:16 AM

    Curious if anyone has benchmarks or determined limitations to this LB? We are looking at building a HA mail cluster for 150,000+ users and I would really like to be able to tell my director that I can save him 20k by building two virtual load balancers in under an hour rather than purchasing two Foundry products, but I cannot find a lick of evidence that Hercules would be able to handle high loads (read through the whole thread and didn't see much in the way of stats). Has anyone compared this product to HAproxy, which has well documented success stories?

    Thanks in adavance!



  • 125.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 13, 2006 01:32 PM

    Oops forgot to answer your other question...

    Adding a second NIC is easy. Power down the VM, add the virtual NIC, reboot. In the OS just add it to /etc/network/interfaces like you did for eth0, only the second card will be called eth1. Just increment the number for each NIC you add. If you have 3 NICs then call them eth0, eth1, and eth2.

    Here's a DHCP example for a second NIC:

    auto lo eth0 eth1

    \[...]

    iface eth1 inet dhcp

    For a static example, see my last post :smileyhappy:

    To test it run ifup eth1. Then do ifconfig, and you should see your shiney new interface with an IP address.



  • 126.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 13, 2006 02:51 PM

    You are the man.....thank you for the help.....I love this forum.......



  • 127.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Nov 21, 2008 05:02 PM

    Matt's post is 2 years old, but I'm hoping for a bit more detail on binding multiple IPs to the Hercules box. Can I bind multiple IPs to a single NIC without adding additional Virtual NICs?

    In Windows, I’d just open the properties on the Local Area

    Connection and add the new static IPs on the TCP/IP advanced properties.

    Clearly I'm not a Linux guy.



  • 128.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Nov 25, 2008 09:08 PM

    I figured out how to add multple IPs, so I thought I'd post the solution. Normally, you'd just add network aliases in the /etc/network/interfaces file, but the version of BusyBox that is included with Hercules has a known bug that prevents setting up aliases in that file (reference). There is a workaround, however. Create a new script with commands like this:

    ifconfig eth0:1 10.10.100.100

    Save the script as S45interfaces and put it in the /etc/init.d/ folder. It will then run on startup and setup your alias IPs.



  • 129.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jan 14, 2009 09:27 AM

    Hi! I've tested Hercules 1.3 (downloaded from Sourceforge) and wanted to create a bridge using 'brctl' from BusyBox , finding out that the function is not available.

    Is it possible to compile latest BusyBox from Hercules in order to use it? Any other solution? (A newer Hercules machine available or something).

    Thanks!



  • 130.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 13, 2006 09:08 PM

    So here's an update on what I've been doing with ESX and Hercules testing:

    I have two IIS 6.0 web servers running on Windows Server 2003 SP 1 VM's. They both have static IP's and are called WEBTEST01 and WEBTEST02.

    Next, I set up two Hercules VM's (to get the vmdk from a workstation to an ESX version see http://kb.vmware.com/vmtnkb/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=900&sliceId=SAL_Public(

    I called the VM's Hercules01 and Hercules02. Their "real" IP's are irrelevant, so I just left them with their default DHCP setup. What is important is that they are sharing a static VRRP address.

    I've had this up and running for days now, and both instances of Hercules are barely using a couple megs of ram. I'm going to get some stress test automation tools and beat Hercules up a bit (and hopefully not get IT to come and kill me).

    To mirror IIS 6.0 servers I realized I had to both mainatin the same files and the same IIS settings. My solution was to use a little batch script with iiscnfg.vbs /copy. You can read up more on that, but basically that command lets you copy IIS settings over a network to another server. Every time I change IIS settings on WEBTEST01 I just run the batch file. To mirror files/permissions/securities I am using robocopy as a service with the /MIR and /COPYALL flags.

    I'll let you know what happens when I get around to stress testing Hercules. Haven't googled much yet on this, but does anyone know of any good tools to use for this kind of automation?

    Anyways, it's 5 o' clock on a Friday here... Time for some beers.



  • 131.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 16, 2006 01:27 PM

    I'm trying a similar setup and can't seem to get pen to listen on the vrrp virtual IP address. I have configured both hercules boxes the same, I can ping the vrrp virtual IP but cannot get pen to load balance over it. I have my hercules boxes dual homed and they load balance and work great with their assigned IP addresses. Here is what my config looks like below:

    PIDFILE=/var/run/pen.pid

    PIDFILE2-/var/run/pen2.pid

    CONTROLPORT=8888

    CONTROLPORT2=8889

    CHROOTDIR=/chroot/pen

    VRRP_IP=192.168.5.100

    VSERVER_ID=1

    LBSERVER=80

    LBSERVER2=443

    SERVER1=192.168.10.200

    SEVRER2=192.168.10.201

    case "$1" in

    start)

    echo -n "Starting VRRP Cluster Service: "

    /sbin/vrrpd -i eth0 -v $VSERVER_ID $VRRP_IP

    echo " \[OK]"

    if \[ -x /bin/pen ] ; then

    echo -n "Starting LB on Port 80: "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT -X -l $LOGFILE -p $PIDFILE $LBSERVER $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo " \[OK]"

    fi

    if \[ -x /bin/pen ] ; then

    echo -n "Starting LN on Port 443 "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT2 -X -l $LOGFILE -p $PIDFILE2 $LBSERVER2 $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo " \[OK]"

    fi

    ;;

    stop)

    echo -n "Halting LB on Port 80: "

    kill `cat /var/run/pen.pid`

    echo " \[OK]

    echo -n "Halting LB on Port 443: "

    kill `cat /var/run/pen2.pid`

    echo " \[OK]"

    echo -n "Halting VRRPD Cluster Deamon: "

    killall vrrpd

    echo " \[OK]"

    ;;

    *)

    echo "usage; $0 \{ start | stop }" >&2

    EXIT 1

    ;;



  • 132.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 18, 2006 01:04 PM

    Hmm... I can think of a couple things to try.

    1.) This may sound silly, but try to ping 192.168.5.100 before enabling vrrpd to make sure another machine doesn't have it.

    2.) Do 192.168.5.100 and 192.168.10.200 use the same gateway? I'm not sure if that matters and I'm not in the lab to test it out. Try using a vrrpd address like 192.168.10.202

    3.) Try vrrpd with the -n flag (don't handle virtual mac address).

    Hope that helps, let us know how it goes.



  • 133.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 18, 2006 01:53 PM

    1.) Yeah this is a new subnet so none of the IP's are in use, but I had checked it just to be sure.

    2.) 192.168.10.x I don't give these machines gateways. The only purpose of this subnet is to sit behind the load balancer with the web servers on it.

    If I load up the load balancer and go to the physical address of the box 192.168.5.101 it works great no problems what so ever. I'm running vrrpd on the 192.168.5.x network because that is the one the firewall nats to.

    3.) I have tried vrrpd with and without the -n flag doesn't seem to make a difference.

    I thank you much for your help, it's got to be something so simple that I'm over looking, just can't put my finger on it.



  • 134.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 19, 2006 05:06 PM

    Has anyone tried to use the -w param on the pen startup script?

    from the PEN docs, -w filename wil post the pen.log output in HTML format to the specified file.

    Can't seem to get it to work.

    Any help is appreciated.

    Cheers,

    Tony.



  • 135.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Nov 03, 2006 07:56 PM

    Sorry, have never used the -w param. Have you tried checking the pen users list for any more info?



  • 136.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 20, 2006 01:34 PM

    Hi prabhakar,

    1st of all: Great work! Cool to have an very easy to use small image for an LB.

    You can even handle other protocols like ssh and CIFS when you balance on the right ports. I've missed this info in the documentation on the VMWARE site. Could be very useful for others as well ...

    Unfortunately I have a big problem with the stability of the system when I use it with VMWARE-Server 1.0.1. Every couple of Minutes I get an kernel crash. Don't know why...

    And the strange thing is: vrrpd seems to be buggy at all. I can balance without this one running, but when I try to start this one nothing is working anymore. Even no complain or an error. It does simply nothing further and I have to reboot to get it working again. The whole VM is freezed.

    May be you have a solution on that.

    BTW I'm running it on a SUN X4100 2xOpteron 285 16GB RAM with FC5 and on that VMware-Server 1.0.1

    Thanks mate,

    Arne



  • 137.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Oct 24, 2006 03:57 PM

    briearn,

    Do you see errors in /var/log/messages?



  • 138.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Nov 03, 2006 07:51 PM

    Can you post what kind of errors you are seeing? Like Matt said check your /var/log/.



  • 139.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Nov 14, 2006 04:30 PM

    in /var/log/messages is nothing special. No problem occurs.

    BUT: I have a snapshot where all of your VMs crash. This happens from time to time after a while. One after the other...



  • 140.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Feb 18, 2010 02:48 AM

    Hi, looking for some help here please.

    • Running a single HerculesLB server.

      • IP's would be static

    • Will HerculesLB terminate SSL, can i install certs on the Hercules and then hercules will communicate with the web servers via http/80?

      • Can I install multiple SSL certs terminating for different domains/server farms

    • How can I have multiple IP's listening on the hercules servering different backend webservers? (config example needed please)

      • LBserver1 resolves for Serverweb1, Serverweb2

      • LBserver2 resolves for Serverweb11, Serverweb12

      • LBserver2:443 resolves for Serverweb11, Serverweb12

    Thanks



  • 141.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Apr 15, 2010 03:32 PM

    Thanks to the various posts on this thread, I've managed to get a pair of Hercules appliances up and running in the following configuration:

    • two ESXi hosts, each with a Hercules appliance and an Ubuntu guest running squid proxy and outbound Postfix

    • each of the Hercules guests are configured to load balance between the local Ubuntu instance and the Ubuntu instance on the other ESXi server

    By themselves, the Hercules appliances are functioning as expected; the odd behavior now comes when I enable VRRPD so add redundancy between the load balancers themselves. My understanding is that once you've assigned a virtual IP to VRRP, the pair of VRRP servers is supposed to establish a master/backup configuration. However, once I've started the service, the Hercules appliances hang up for about 15-30 seconds, return to service, but now /var/log/messages show that both servers claim to be the master router.

    Any suggestions on why this might be?

    My (almost) working config:

    #!/bin/sh

    LOGFILE1=/var/log/pen.smtp.log

    LOGFILE2=/var/log/pen.squid.log

    PIDFILE1=/var/run/pen.smtp.pid

    PIDFILE2=/var/run/pen.squid.pid

    CONTROLPORT1=8888

    CONTROLPORT2=8889

    CHROOTDIR=/chroot/pen

    VRRP_IP=10.1.1.100

    VSERVER_ID=1

    LBSERVER1=25

    LBSERVER2=3128

    SERVER1=10.1.1.72

    SERVER2=10.1.1.92

    case "$1" in

    start)

    echo -n "Starting VRRP Cluster Service: "

    /sbin/vrrpd -i eth0 -v $VSERVER_ID $VRRP_IP

    echo "OK"

    if -x /bin/pen ; then

    echo -n "Starting pen.smtp: "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT1 -X -l $LOGFILE1 -p $PIDFILE1 $LBSERVER1 $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo "OK"

    fi

    if -x /bin/pen ; then

    echo -n "Starting pen.squid: "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT2 -X -l $LOGFILE2 -p $PIDFILE2 $LBSERVER2 $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo "OK"

    fi

    ;;

    stop)

    kill `cat /var/run/pen.smtp.pid`

    kill `cat /var/run/pen.squid.pid`

    killall vrrpd

    ;;

    *)

    echo "usage: $0 { start | stop }" &gt;&2

    exit 1

    ;;

    esac



  • 142.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Apr 30, 2010 06:22 PM

    Jeez people go read up on Pen;

    The default concurrent users is 2048, but you can change it to what ever you want.

    try this: pen --help

    I don't think anyone is still supporting this. Too bad as this is a great appliance.

    ]Monty[



  • 143.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Nov 15, 2010 03:13 PM

    Hi,

    I am searching for an VMware ESX4 ready Hercules Appliance.

    Can anybody help me?

    Kind regards,

    Andre



  • 144.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Mar 31, 2011 12:05 PM

    Very nice and simple VM. tks to prabhakar, (if you still read this.)

    I download exs3 version and use vmware converter to bring into esxi4 host.

    Adapted startup script and boot mod from Hoppa66, two Hercules VMs with VRRP up and running in two hours.



  • 145.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 05, 2011 08:56 PM

    @legacy, re: vrrpd

    Curious, did you ever figure out a solution to the VRRP issue?  In my testing, as long as BOTH are set to the same priority, you won't have a split brain problem when you REBOOT either vm.  However, in a scenario where network connectivity between hosts is interrupted, the vrrp service on the standby goes active (as expected) but vrrp remains split brain after network services are restored.

    What I've found is that VRRP resets eth0's MAC address (according to ifconfig) when becoming the active system.  I was expecting that it would retain its guest MAC, plus anwser for requests to the virtual MAC (vrrpd), not reset its interface.  I have a feeling that this is not playing nicely with the underlying vSwitch.  Will test some more theories and possibly open case w/ VMware.

    @others, Re: support for vm

    Definitely no longer supported... no idea where the creator disappeared to.  However, this is a simple system to create on your own.  I have documented the process, using Ubuntu8.04 JeOS.  However, as part of troubleshooting the above, I'm currently updating to an Ubuntu 8.10LTS minimal virutual build.  Once I address the above problem, I would be happy to share with the community.  Its not nearly as small as the dropbox implementation the original author provided, but I'm finding that having tools like tcpdump built into the appliance is quite handy.



  • 146.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 06, 2011 08:47 PM

    Good news.  I've found that using keepalived instead of vrrpd seems to provide a much more robust solution.

    By setting both keepalived instances as BACKUP, with one Priority 100, the other 90, and the "nopreempt" option:

    - Split-brain recovers, forcing an election, which the balancer vm with pri 100 wins.  (tested by blocking multicast with iptables on one load balancer to simulate switch failure, isolating the current master.  Both load balancers are now master.  Flushing the iptables rules, they both immediately see eachother and an election occurs.  This is where vrrpd failed.  For some reason, vrrpd would not see each other's multicasts and thus no election would happen.)

    - If the current master (prio 100) fails, the other (prio 90) becomes Master.  Once the failed load balancer comes back online, it will remain in Backup state.  This is important (to me) as I don't want clients failing over twice should the master fail.  The application behind the loadbalancer is stateful, and the clients switching twice causes two outages.  One is bad, two is worse :smileywink:



  • 147.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Dec 20, 2006 03:09 PM

    Is there a way to get this working on VMware Server?

    We have a couple of oldish HP Proliants that I've put the free VMWare Server on.

    This app would be useful on there.

    I've tried copying the hercules files across to it and registering an exisitng machine. But when I start the VM I just get a blank screen?



  • 148.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Dec 22, 2006 01:08 PM

    It's ok, i've figured out what i did wrong!

    Needed to create the VM with Buslogic instead of LSIlogic interface.

    Works fine now.



  • 149.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Feb 17, 2007 02:32 PM

    Hi,

    Just tried to use the supplied vmdk on my iSCSI/SAN based ESX farm, but when creating the VM, I could not locate the .vmdk file (whilst I copied it there).

    Steps to solve this (save you at least my headache):

    -1- Copy .vmdk from the .zip file to /vmimages/Hercules.vmdk on any ESX server (must be on local SCSI disk, not on shared VMFS volumes!)

    -2- Create /vmfs/volumes/; this puts the stuff in 1 directory

    -5- Create the virtual machine

    -6- When powering up, ESX might ask you to change SCSI types automatically. Select "Yes" to use the correct SCSI controller type

    -7- Delete the copied .vmdk on the local disk you where working on

    This is probably something related to iSCSI related installations only ...

    Cheers,

    Mark



  • 150.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Feb 17, 2007 07:14 PM

    Little extra to spare about 150Mhz of CPU power when running on ESX 3:

    \- Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

    \- Add "noapic nolapic clock=pit" to the kernel entry, example:

    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17.7 root=/dev/sda1 rw quiet splash noapic nolapic nosmp clock=pit[/b]

    Cheers,

    Mark



  • 151.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Feb 17, 2007 07:25 PM

    And last but not least, an /etc/init.d/pen with vrrp inside and setup for multiple virtuals and multiple services/ports.

    #!/bin/sh

    #

    \# startup script for pen

    \# moudsen@allshare.nl

    PIDDIR=/var/run

    PIDFILE1=/var/run/pen1.pid

    PIDFILE2=/var/run/pen2.pid

    VIRTUAL1_ADDR="10.1.8.21"

    VIRTUAL1_INSTANCE=1

    VIRTUAL1_PRIORITY=100

    PEN_CHROOTDIR=/chroot/pen

    PEN1_CPORT1=8888

    PEN1_LBSERVER=80

    PEN1_PIDFILE=$PIDDIR/pen_1.pid

    PEN2_CPORT2=8889

    PEN2_LBSERVER=443

    PEN2_PIDFILE=$PIDDIR/pen_2.pid

    SERVER1=10.1.3.84

    SERVER2=10.1.3.85

    case "$1" in

    start)

    if \[ -x /sbin/vrrpd ] ; then

    echo -n "Starting vrrpd ($VIRTUAL1_ADDR): "

    /sbin/vrrpd -f $PIDDIR -n -i eth0 -v $VIRTUAL1_INSTANCE $VIRTUAL1_ADDR

    echo "OK"

    fi

    if \[ -x /bin/pen ] ; then

    echo -n "Starting pen (*:$PEN1_LBSERVER): "

    /bin/pen -C $PEN_CPORT1 -X -p $PEN1_PIDFILE $PEN1_LBSERVER $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo "OK"

    fi

    if \[ -x /bin/pen ] ; then

    echo -n "Starting pen (*:$PEN2_LBSERVER): "

    /bin/pen -C $PEN_CPORT2 -X -p $PEN2_PIDFILE $PEN2_LBSERVER $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo "OK"

    fi

    ;;

    stop)

    if \[ -x $PEN1_PIDFILE ] ; then

    kill `cat $PEN1_PIDFILE`

    fi

    if \[ -x $PEN2_PIDFILE ] ; then

    kill `cat $PEN2_PIDFILE`

    fi

    killall vrrpd

    ;;

    *)

    echo "usage: $0 \{ start | stop }" >&2

    exit 1

    ;;

    esac



  • 152.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Feb 17, 2007 07:27 PM

    Prabhakar,

    Thx for this wonderfull little piece of working stuff; have it working within 2 hours on ESX3, though needed some changes specific for the ESX3 environment ...

    Perhaps you would like to take these changes in consideration for your next deployment of Hercules? I've posted my findings before this one ...

    CU



  • 153.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Feb 17, 2007 07:52 PM

    Hoppa66 --

    I want to thank you for sharing your knowledge! These forums are a great place where people are able to get answers to some really strange questions - and it's all because of people like you. You've posted only four times, all in this thread, but the quality of information you've shared is very high.

    Please stick around and continue to share...we need people like you to maintain the quality of these forums.

    KLC

    User Moderator



  • 154.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Feb 21, 2007 02:57 PM

    Thank you very much for trying out hercules. Glad you have it working. I will certainly incorporate your changes into the next version of hercules.

    thanks



  • 155.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Apr 05, 2007 03:13 AM

    Yet Another Wasted VM Applet

    BAN BITTORRENT!!!!

    I hope VMware drops all VM Applets that use torrent.



  • 156.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Apr 16, 2007 09:00 PM

    Has anyone had problems with the virtual machine not responding after a period of inactivity?



  • 157.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 10, 2007 02:35 PM

    I'm having the same problem as pgomer.

    I have two physical servers, each with two virtual hercules, all listening on a single vrrpd ip.

    If i start them up it all works fine. The LB's all listen on the vrrpd ip, respond and pass on to the next devices as it should.

    If i leave the LB's on but idle, after a while they stop passing the traffic on.

    If i try to access the vrrpd ip or the LB's ip direct i get a page cannot be displayed error.

    If i restart any of them it works again fine?



  • 158.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 01, 2007 12:44 PM

    Does anyone know if pen is sticky?

    I'm going to use it to load balance between two Citrix Access Gateway servers but a requirement is that the load balancer is sticky?

    Any help appreciated.



  • 159.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 02, 2007 12:39 PM

    The answer is yes and no. In most scenerios it will remain sticky, however if a user is logged into an application and the server that they are sent to goes down or becomes unavailable they will be sent to another server in the farm. This situation should be rare, but might occur. I would think the user would get an error and they would have to start a new session at that point. An issue is going to exist no matter if you use a purely sticky solution or this one. The only difference maybe in how your application handles being transfered to a different sever in the farm instead of the connection just going away like in a traditional sticky solution. I have include the exact language for your information below.

    HTH

    g

    According to http://siag.nu/pen/

    The load balancing algorithm keeps track of clients and will try to send them back to the server they visited the last time. The client table has a number of slots (default 2048, settable through command-line arguments). When the table is full, the least recently used one will be thrown out to make room for the new one.

    This is superior to a simple round-robin algorithm, which sends a client that connects repeatedly to different servers. Doing so breaks applications that maintain state between connections in the server, including most modern web applications.

    When pen detects that a server is unavailable, it scans for another starting with the server after the most recently used one. That way we get load balancing and "fair" failover for free.

    Correctly configured, pen can ensure that a server farm is always available, even when individual servers are brought down for maintenance or reconfiguration. The final single point of failure, pen itself, can be eliminated by running pen on several servers, using vrrp to decide which is active.



  • 160.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 09, 2007 07:44 AM

    Thanks for that g,

    We'll be testing it next week so I'll let people know how it works with Citrix.

    Cheers,

    Andy.



  • 161.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 17, 2007 02:57 PM

    Did you ever get load balancing working with citrix? I am trying to do the same but with 2 citrix front end web servers. The problem I get is that only the first connection is redirected to the web server. All subsequent connections from different computers get "page cannot be displayed". If the load balancer is restarted another computer can connect, but no longer the first etc. etc.

    Does anyone know what would cause the only one connection to be passed onto the webserver and not a second?



  • 162.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 02, 2007 12:26 PM

    Is it recommended to installed vmware tools? I have attempted to install, but so far no luck. I am running this on ESX3.0.1. I added a cdrom via virtual center. I pointed it to the linux.iso inside the vmware tools directory. I created a /mnt/cdrom directory. I then attempted to mount the cdrom from the usual places and no joy. I checked in virtual center and apparently in ver 2 you lose the ability to specify whether the cdrom is SCSI or IDE. It is always ide from what I can tell. I then checked the /boot/config-2.6.17.7 and apparently unless I am misreading the file there is no configuration specified for IDE.

    Do I need to even worry about vmware tools? What is the required method for installing it?

    g

    Message was edited by:

    gguntz



  • 163.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 17, 2007 04:19 PM

    gguntz,

    I don't think there is support for cd rom in the kernel. You could mount the files you need on a different machine and copy them over with scp or put them on a webserver and use "wget".

    However, vmware-tools will want to compile its modules with gcc which is also not in the Hercules image.

    All,

    My knowledge is patchy on the subject. I keep reading that the network module from vmware-tools gives "enhanced networking" but cannot find any decent documentation on what exactly the enhancement is. Are we going from 10Mbits to 1Gbit when the new module is installed? Is it worth it to go through all the trouble to get it installed ?

    The Hercules NIC is performing wonderfully for my needs, but maybe if the enhancement is large some users will be interested.

    Prabhakar,

    Did you have any intentions of trying to compile vmware tools into the image?

    I'm not sure if ESX uses different vmware tools then workstaion (I think so).

    Also what would be the best way to go about that? Add cdrom support, install gcc and the kernel headers in the image and let users compile their own tools? I fear this may bloat the image. The other option would be to compile the vmware network module into the image with uClibc, which may or may not be an easy task and there are different versions for workstation and ESX.



  • 164.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 21, 2007 09:00 PM

    Matts right. To compare vmware-tools you do need the compiler and friends. You might also need other libraries/.so files for the actual compile. Also I have never understood exactly what installing vmware-tools will give us in this case. So it may not be worth the hassle.

    On a related note, I would like to get all your opinions on something I have been mulling over. I am thinking very seriously about building a new load balancer appliance based on the regular glibc. The busybox/uclibc works mostly but is harder to get going and painful to update. I am thinking in terms of building a stripped down glibc based linux appliance along with a UI for setting it up and managing it, alerts, statistics, and reporting. This will of course not fit in a 3 MB version. I am thinking along the lines of about 20-25MB, and selling it for about $50-75 with a years worth of free upgrades and forum support. I would also like to create a vmware appliance and a usb key version of the load balancer.

    This will enable me to focus and build an appliance that is really what you guys need. Does this make sense or am I missing something? Will anyone of you be interested in something like this? If you want to contact me offline, you are welcome to email me - prabhakar at chaganti.net.

    thanks



  • 165.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 17, 2007 05:43 AM

    Great piece of software, never really been a guru of nix based platforms, but seemed easy enough to set up. I currently have it set up with two NICs with an IP Bound to each NIC, I was just wondering if it was possible to have one NIC have multiple addresses that PEN can then load balance?

    Also I haven't been able to see any thing, that would allow you to drain all connections to one of the balanced servers so you can take it down without affecting the end users?

    Many Thanks for your HIA.



  • 166.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2007 12:00 AM

    Cool load balancer, how many concurrent connections and/or sessions can Hercules handled?



  • 167.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Dec 08, 2009 03:09 PM

    Hi,

    Did you ever get an answer to the number of concurrent connections Hercules can handle?

    Can you send me the result?

    Please respond to louis.frati@kaman.com

    thanks,

    Lou



  • 168.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2007 03:02 PM

    OK. I am gonna play dumb here. Downloaded Hecules-SCSI-ESX3.zip. Extracted the files to a windows share. WinSCP'ed the files to a new folder on a LUN under vmfs/volumes. Now what?

    I created a new VM via VC, using Ohter Linux for the OS,called LB. Then PuTTY'ed to the host and navigated to the vmfs/volumes and CP the Hercules file, overwriting the new VMs files. such as .vmx, .vmsd, vmdk.

    And of course I tried other things as well.

    I can't seem to get this VM to boot. If this is for ESX3 why is there no -flat.vmdk file?

    Ok

    So what is the proper steps to get Hercules VM into the ESX3 enviroment? Obviously, I am doing something completely wrong here.

    Thanks for the help in advance



  • 169.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2007 03:33 PM

    Hi Sean,

    You can see Hoppa66's post a couple pages back on how to do this.

    Basically you need to "import" the vmdk file from workstation format to VMFS format so that ESX can use it.

    vmkfstools -i /vmimages/Hercules.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/

    After you do this, the easiest thing to do is create a new VM and "use existing virtual disk" that you just "imported".

    (FYI: To reverse a VM from VMFS to workstation format you use vmkfstools -e, which stands for export)



  • 170.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2007 04:08 PM

    Thank you. I was able to ge the VM to boot after doing the Import.

    One note, afte the import it converted the new -flat.vmdk to 100mb,

    Thanks again.



  • 171.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 21, 2007 05:04 PM

    Yes. VMFS expands the disk to it's full size (hence "flat" at the end of the name). This is mostly to ensure that a 100MB disk will actually be guaranteed the full 100MB.

    Workstation is not generally considered production so it is ok to have the disk expand (and contract) as you need it, without the guarantee. You are able to shrink Workstation VM's with VMware tools but VMWare tools for ESX has this feature disabled.



  • 172.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 16, 2007 06:23 PM

    OK I am new to linux and have never worked with pen before.

    Basically what I am looking to do is have distribute http requests.

    I want to give the ip address of this load balancer and have it redirected to two web servers on port 80 but I have no idea how to accomplish this.

    I have tried the following command

    pen -l pen.log -p pen.pid lbhost:80 host1:80 host2:80 as I found in the pen HOWTO

    http://siag.nu/pen/howto.shtml

    I have also tried using the config file in the forum at the end of page 4 but I just keep getting page cannot be displayed or a file list of the load balancer?

    Anyone who has set this up in this way please help!



  • 173.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 20, 2007 10:28 PM

    looks cool for it's size ;). does it know microsoft's session directory though? the NLB options there are horrible and this appliance would help tremendously.



  • 174.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 01, 2007 12:44 PM

    Thx for this fantastic app!!! if you want to "feel" it work... come by at http://aricars.eu

    One question though: has anyone integrated IPTABLES yet? Wouldnt that be a great addition to a Load Balancer?

    Thx again!

    Michael



  • 175.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 07, 2007 09:09 PM

    I cannot seem to get this to work to only a single web server.

    I am running a webserver in a vmware instance on 192.168.199.128. I can succesfully ping both the webserver and hercules from the client that is running both vmware instances and both vmware instances can succesfully ping each other.

    I can also access succesfully the webserver via http://192.168.199.128:9080 from the client machine, but from hercules\pen I cannot get it to work.

    I am using the following command:

    /bin/pen -C 8888 -X -p /var/run/pen.pid 80 192.168.199.128:9080 -f -d -S 1

    and it returns the following error in de pen.log when accessing hercules via http from the client:

    2007-09-07 11:08:20: Client 192.168.199.1 has index -1

    2007-09-07 11:08:20: lookup_client returns -1

    2007-09-07 11:08:20: Trying server 0 at time 1189184900

    2007-09-07 11:08:20: match_acl(0, 29862080)

    2007-09-07 11:08:20: Server 0 failed, retry in 30 sec: Connection refused

    2007-09-07 11:08:20: Couldn't find a server for client

    any hints or thoughts where to look?



  • 176.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted May 01, 2008 10:41 AM

    Hi there

    Brilliant idea! I do have one question though, does Hercules offer session persistence?

    Thanks

    y



  • 177.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jul 15, 2008 01:42 PM

    Hi all,

    I got a little problem with displaying the correct X-Forwarded-For header in http requests option. (the -H switch). The LB has a static IP (192.168.100.140) and is in front of 4 apache2 webservers. Even with the -H switch I still see the internal IP address of the LB in the Apache logfiles, instead of the external IP of the client visiting the site.

    Anybody got an idea?

    Below is my startup, maybe the -H isn't in the correct place?

    Kind regards,

    Ralphie

    PIDFILE=/var/run/pen.pid

    PIDFILE2=/var/run/pen2.pid

    CONTROLPORT=8888

    CONTROLPORT2=8889

    CHROOTDIR=/chroot/pen

    LBSERVER=www

    LBSERVER2=192.168.100.140:443

    SERVER1=192.168.100.130

    SERVER2=192.168.100.131

    SERVER3=192.168.100.132

    SERVER4=192.168.100.133

    case "$1" in

    start)

    if ; then

    echo -n "Starting pen: "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT -X -H -l $LOGFILE -p $PIDFILE $LBSERVER $SERVER1 $SERVER2 $SERVER3 $SERVER4

    echo "OK"

    fi

    if ; then

    echo -n "Starting pen: "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT2 -X -H -l $LOGFILE2 -p $PIDFILE2 192.168.100.140:443 $SERVER1 $SERVER2 $SERVER3 $SERVER4

    echo "OK"

    fi

    ;;

    stop)

    kill `cat /var/run/pen.pid`

    kill 'cat /var/run/pen2.pid'

    ;;

    *)

    echo "usage: $0 { start | stop }" &gt;&2

    exit 1

    ;;

    esac



  • 178.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 11, 2008 02:58 PM

    Can this be loaded as a VM?



  • 179.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 17, 2008 09:47 AM

    Hi,

    I have a small issue when running this on ESX 3.5.

    My setup:

    2 Windows servers running IIS (iis001 and iis002)

    2 Hercules load balancers.

    If I don't enable vrrp the load balancers work with no problems, but the instant I start vrrp the master goes offline.

    I can ping the slave IP, but not the master and the vrrp address

    on the master I get:

    hercules user.warn syslog: VRRP ID 19 on eth0: 10.197.207.55 is down, we are now the master

    If I reboot the master I get this in the slave (wich then takes the master role, and goes offline)

    hercules user.warn syslog: VRRP ID 19 on eth0: 10.197.207.54 is down, we are now the master

    I have tried running the Hercules VMs on VMWare Workstation and they work here.

    my PEN start script:

    #!/bin/sh

    #startup script for pen

    LOGFILE1=/var/log/pen1.log

    PIDFILE1=/var/run/pen1.pid

    CONTROLPORT1=8888

    VIRTUAL_ADDR="10.197.207.80"

    VIRTUAL_ID=19

    CHROOTDIR=/chroot/pen

    LBSERVER1=80

    SERVER1=10.197.196.98:80

    SERVER2=10.197.196.80:80

    case "$1" in

    start)

    echo -n "Starting VRRP: "

    vrrpd -i eth0 -v $VIRTUAL_ID $VIRTUAL_ADDR

    echo "OK"

    if -x /bin/pen; then

    echo -n "Starting pen: "

    /bin/pen -C $CONTROLPORT1 -X -l $LOGFILE1 -p $PIDFILE1 $LBSERVER1 $SERVER1 $SERVER2

    echo "OK"

    fi

    ;;

    stop)

    kill `cat /var/run/pen1.pid`

    killall vrrpd

    ;;

    *)

    echo "usage: $0 { start | stop}" &gt;&2

    exit 1

    ;;

    esac

    Any ideas much appreciated.



  • 180.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 20, 2008 11:44 AM

    Hi,

    I have ESX 3.5 too and I can't install Hercules on my ESX 3.5.0

    I have installing Workstation (Evalutation) to import Hercules from torrents to ESX but I have an "error internal" to wizard.

    And when I trying to "vmkfs-tools -i", I have an "error" because the hard is IDE and not SCSI. but I don't know how to do it !

    I have read all the POST but .... can you help me please :smileyhappy:

    Thanks

    JCB



  • 181.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Aug 20, 2008 11:54 AM

    I am having the same issue!

    William D. Souder

    Director, Network Operations

    Information Security Officer

    Office for Information Technology

    Berry College

    706.236.5099 (o)

    706.676.4205 (m)

    706.238.7880 (f)

    This message was sent from a BlackBerry wireless device, please excuse any typos and brevity.



  • 182.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 05, 2009 06:04 PM

    This may sound like a stupid question, but where's the download link (assuming this is still available)? I don't see one on the link you provided.

    I'd like to give this a try for some internal load ballancing.

    Thanks,

    Denny



  • 183.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 08, 2009 01:07 PM

    Mrdenny,

    Look on page 2 or 3, it should be the second link that is given (you should read some of the comments, lots of good information). Otherwise search sourceforge and they might have it.



  • 184.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 08, 2009 06:49 PM

    Mike,

    Thanks. That's perfect. I was actually able to download via torrent, but it didn't work under ESX which was my next question. Kudos to you since this version appears to run undex ESX directly.

    Denny



  • 185.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 08, 2009 07:51 PM

    I must be doing something very wrong here. I've got the vmdk converted and setup in a new VM as per Hoppa66's directons a couple of pages back. However each time I try and fire up the VM on my cluster I get "Failed to relocate virtual machine".

    Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Sorry I can't pre-emtivly provide more info. I'm not exactly a VMware Expert.

    Thanks,

    Denny



  • 186.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Jun 09, 2009 04:53 AM

    With a little more poking around I was able to get the system up and running. Apparently ESX didn't like the relitive path to the vmdk file. When I put the explicit path in the VM booted up.

    With the addition of a little more poking around I've managed to get a VIP up and running, sort of. I can access the VIP from within the same subnet, but I can't access it from outside the subnet. But I can access the main IP of the machine.

    The main IP for eth0 is 10.3.16.96.

    I've setup an IP for eth0:1 on 10.3.16.58 and I've got that vip going to 10.3.16.56 and 10.3.16.57. Any machines on the 10.3.16.0/24 subnet can access 10.3.16.58, but no machines on the other subnets can access this vip.

    When I'm booting up the VM I've created a file in /etc/init.d to start the pen instance. Within that script I've added "ifconfig eth0:1 10.3.16.58 netmask 255.255.255.0 up"to bring the IP online. Is there a better method that I should be using?

    Denny



  • 187.  RE: Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

    Posted Sep 19, 2009 11:49 PM

    I've got Pen up and running without issue, but when I fire up vrrpd to setup redundant pen load balancers nothing works correctly.

    I posted my setup and config up on Server Fault. If someone could take a peak and respond either here or there I'd be most grateful.

    Thanks,

    Denny