On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, Javid Abdul-AJAVID1 wrote: > Good load balancing utility would be lsf , which is dynamic but not free i > suppose, others would BIND static round robin > any more suggestions :-)))
Hmmm, one way to do load-balancing under Samba is to use DFS. I have some patches somewhere for the MSDFS code under Samba that gets it to rotate the referrals that are sent back. I guess I could try to dig them up. Maybe I will put them up at my web site. > -----Original Message----- > From: John E. Malmberg > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 10/5/02 10:03 PM > Subject: Re: load balancing question > > Stephan Stapel wrote: > > Dear people on the list! > > > > I hope it's ok to ask a feature question on this core-feature list. > > What I would like to know is whether there are some efforts on > > implementing load balancing features into samba or some experiences/ > > experiments in this area. As standard-Windows doesn't offer these > > features, adding them would give samba-based systems yet another > > (very big) advantage over a standard nt server system. Just that you > > know why I'm asking for this. We have the problem to serve 3d scenes > > as well as image data to about 100 render nodes running under Windows > > NT. When starting to render, all machines are asking at exactly the > > same time for exactly the same data, which might be about 500 > > megabytes per machine. Action like this results into a server load of > > about 30-50 which isn't really satisfactory... > > Load balancing can be implemented with out making any changes to Samba, > and has been. > > Load balancing on TCP/IP generally requires having a "metric" server on > each host that feeds information to a DNS that understands how to round > robin connection requests. > > The next issue that you run into is simultaneous access to the disks. > > Since this is read only data, you could replicate it before the > rendering, but I am guessing that there is some reason that you are not > replicating the data. > > If your platform allows simultaneous access to disks, then the load > broker should be sufficient. > > If not, then you need to do more research. If you do not have multiple > hosts sharing simulaneous access to the disks, then there probably is > not much to gain by load sharing them from multiple servers, as only one > > host will really be doing all of the work. > > But again, there is nothing in Samba that prevents using existing load > sharing techniques, if the underlying platform supports it. > > Now a server load of 30-50 to a machine is not excessive to some classes > > of machines, and if they are really all hitting the same data, then file > > system caching will help. Many of the systems my employer sells can > handle that type of load easily, they also support simultaneous disk > access from multiple hosts. > > What actually would help more is a custom protocol that used multicast > packets which would reduce the total amount of network traffic. > > -John > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Personal Opinion Only > -- Regards ----- Richard Sharpe, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.richardsharpe.com
