Deploying a software based Load Balancer using IPVS with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Now you should set a Piranha Web UI admin password, so we can configure the load balancers via the web admin page.
Note: This should only be done on the primary node, as this is the only load balancer that will be running the Web UI.

[root@lb01 ~]# piranha-passwd
New Password:
Verify:
Adding password for user piranha
[root@lb01 ~]#

Lastly we need to open port 3636 on the primary load balancer so we can use the Web UI

[root@lb01 ~]# iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 3636 -j ACCEPT
[root@lb01 ~]# service iptables save
iptables: Saving firewall rules to /etc/sysconfig/iptables:[  OK  ]
[root@lb01 ~]#

Now browse to your primary load balancer via your web browser. My primary is lb01.example.com so I have opened http://lb01.example.com:3636

Log in with the username “piranha” and the password you set above.

 

Under the control/monitoring tab, you will see that the daemon is currently stopped. This is simply because we have not configured our load balancer yet.

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Jump across to the Global Settings tab.
You will notice that the IP address of your primary load balancer is already set and the network type is set to direct.
I will be using Direct routing in this article as this is the recommended practice. If you wish to find out more about the different types of networking, please have a read of the Load Balancing document for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. You can also click here

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Next is the redundancy tab
This is a really straight forward way to set up failover, as we just need to add our IP address of our secondary load balancer.
Click the enable button and then enter the IP address of your secondary.

Click Accept when done

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Now its time to actually configure our VIP and real servers. Click the Virtual Servers tab
You will see there is nothing configured. Start by clicking the Add button. Once you see the new item appear, click the edit button.

You can see I have called my virtual server “apache_web_farm”. You can call this what ever you chose. It is not referenced anywhere else other than in IPVS.
As we are creating a web service, I have stated port 80 and given the VIP address of 10.0.1.60

Click Accept when done.

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We have now configured the VIP and virtual server. Now we need to assign real servers to this virtual server.

Click the “Real Server” link.

Just like before there will be no servers configured. Click the add button to add a new real server.

Next click the Edit button.

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Once you have clicked Edit, you can enter a name and IP address for your real server.

Click accept when done.

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Once you have clicked accept, click the Real Server link again to take you back to the list.

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The new server will appear, however now you will need to activate the host. Click the radio button on the left, and then click the (De)Activate button.

Your new server should now appear as up.

Repeat the above few steps to add as many real servers as you wish. When you are finished, ensure that all servers are activated.

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