on 3/15/09 6:09 AM, Robert Hajime Lanning said:

> Can't read it. Not a member. Sorry.  I'll see if I can get to it in
> October, when it is available.

I'll see if I can find the PDF version I have, and send that to you.

> Anycast is not a widely used load-balancing technique.  As it requires
> multiple geographically dispersed datacenters.  It is not used within
> server farms, which most people are familiar with.

Actually, in some places it is used within server farms.  The ISC 
approach (described at 
<http://ftp.isc.org/isc/pubs/tn/isc-tn-2003-1.html>) is not the only one.

In practice, anycast has been successfully applied to DNS, as 
f.root-servers.net has over 50 public installations around the world, 
and probably at least a hundred more private ones.  Most anyone can get 
their own private copy of f.root-servers.net, if they ask.  All of those 
machines answer for the same IP addresses.  In theory, this should cause 
problems with TCP-based connections, when routes change, etc....  In 
practice that has not shown to be an issue.

However, even though both protocols use UDP, NTP != DNS.  With NTP, 
there's a lot more state stored by the client with regards to their 
servers, and it's stored for long periods of time -- days, weeks, 
months, years, or more.  If you can give me a 100% guarantee that there 
will never, ever be any route flaps over that period of time, then maybe 
this isn't an issue for you.  But that doesn't mean that this is a best 
practice that others should follow, and it doesn't mean that you should 
be encouraging others to do the same.

> And how many 1000 node LDAP server clusters have you seen?  (ie. the
> original question was putting a few LDAP servers behind a load-balancer
> for HA)

I run the LDAP servers for the uTexas Enterprise Directory system (see 
<http://www.utexas.edu/its/ted/>), and we have three production LDAP 
servers behind a pair of Netscaler fail-over load-balancing switches. 
We have had issues with some of the servers getting out of sync.

> Seagate runs a suite of 5 read-only LDAP servers for their hole
> corporation behind an F5 Big-IP load-balancer. (With a mirror on the
> other side of the globe.)  There is a suite of 3 writable LDAP server
> behind the same Big-IP, though different pool.  This runs their identity
> management for the company.

We're working on re-architecting the system to try to reduce or 
eliminate the synchronization problems, but just because your systems 
have always worked perfectly over their entire history doesn't mean that 
others haven't had significant issues.

> It is not hard.

Depends on how you try to change the one engine for the plane while it's 
in the air.

> Right, and who said I wanted to tell Howard Chu or Quanah Parker
> anything?  I did not say it was wrong to point to the list.  I just did
> not like the blanket statement that THE list was THE ONLY place.
> 
> It really comes across like you are saying that the people on the LOPSA
> list don't know anything.

No, I wouldn't say they don't know anything.

But although I am subscribed to this list, and I've been supporting the 
NTP Public Services Project for over five years and I have some 
experience I can share with people, this still is not the appropriate 
place to discuss NTP.  However, I can tell you where the appropriate 
place is, over on the mailing lists I help run at lists.ntp.org.

Although I have been supporting the Mailman project, a member of the 
Mailman steering committee, and the primary person running the mail 
systems for python.org for over five years, does not mean that this is 
the appropriate place to discuss Mailman.  Again, I can tell you where 
the appropriate mailing lists are (for which I am the primary active 
listowner), over on mail.python.org.

I see no difference for LDAP.

-- 
Brad Knowles
<[email protected]>        If you like Jazz/R&B guitar, check out
LinkedIn Profile:                 my friend bigsbytracks on YouTube at
<http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>    http://preview.tinyurl.com/bigsbytracks
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