From: j...@vidzone.tv
To: support@pfsense.com
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:52:13 +0100
Subject: RE: [pfSense Support] Inbound load balancer performance under heavy
load.
It is fine Tebano,
I appreciate your answer and as you said there are not other
limitations documented nor any other issues I could find anywhere, and I did
spend some time researching…
Regards,
Jose Hernandez
Software and Systems Senior Engineer
VIDZONE DIGITAL MEDIA
In every case, if You've the possibility, I always suggest an update to last
release.Moreover, because a new one is arriving, so I'm sure there's a
difference between every-ones...:-)Cheers.Tebano.
----
From: Tebano epaminonda
[mailto:l_epa_m_ino...@hotmail.com]
Sent: 12 June 2009 11:44
To: support@pfsense.com
Subject: RE: [pfSense Support] Inbound load balancer performance under
heavy load.
From: j...@vidzone.tv
To: support@pfsense.com
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:33:54 +0100
Subject: RE: [pfSense Support] Inbound load balancer performance under heavy
load.
Thank for your response, however the limitations on the featured
list are not the cause of the problem… I am happy with the load balancer
to equally distribute the load, also happy with the firewall not checking for a
valid response… but there seems to be any other limitation not
listed…
Regards,
Jose Hernandez
Software and Systems Senior Engineer
VIDZONE DIGITAL MEDIA
-------------------------------------------------------------
Hi
Josè.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I was simply trying to say that there aren't other limitation (that I know),
except the ones I've pasted You.
Probably
my answer wasn't really wroten correctly... sorry!
Cheers.
Tebano.
From: Tebano epaminonda
[mailto:l_epa_m_ino...@hotmail.com]
Sent: 12 June 2009 11:11
To: support@pfsense.com
Subject: RE: [pfSense Support] Inbound load balancer performance under
heavy load.
From: j...@vidzone.tv
To: support@pfsense.com
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:29:03 +0100
Subject: [pfSense Support] Inbound load balancer performance under heavy load.
Hi,
Yesterday
we had a service launch, and pfSense inbound load balancer let me down big
time… We have been using pfSense 1.2-release version installed on
Dell PowerEdge R200 and CARP for redundancy for around a year now, it probed to
work although we never have had a very high load.
Yesterday
right after we launch the service, we start getting complaints of many requests
failing from users. After some investigation it was clear that the request were
not getting through to our systems!!!
The
only indication of something going bad was the traffic graph (attached is a
screen grab), it was picking up and down as never before… We did some
load testing last week and the week before and we were seeing ~100Mbps constant
outbound speed, we also have seen in the past ~100Mbps inbound speeds… So
I first blame our IP transit provider, after contacting them, they confirmed to
me that no packets were being lost or dropped anywhere in their network and
that their systems were just fine… so the only other thing that could be
causing the problem was pfSense… however I couldn’t find any
indication of anything going wrong but the traffic graph… memory and
processor were fine, states table size, no packets dropped in RRD Graphs,
etc…
After
tweaking many settings in pfSense with no joy, I finally removed the Virtual
Server and created a NAT Port Forward to only one of our web servers layer at
the backend… and that fixed the problem of requests not getting through
and the traffic graph was again stable… I wonder if it is there any known
issue with the inbound load balancer… I think the problem was with the
number of source IPs or states it had to deal with (after the load balancer was
removed, the states picked up to ~210000, as when load testing we tested from a
bunch of ~10 IPs…
The
problem is that we do need load balancing, mainly for redundancy of our systems
at the back end…
The
inbound load balancer that was set up had 3 servers in the pool and, the port
was HTTPS and TCP monitor was configured
Is
there anything in version 1.2-release that affects the performance of the
inbound load balancer? Would this performance issues go away if I upgrade to
the latest stable version, currently 1.2.2?
We
are also thinking in getting commercial support, however we are not sure if
this will help as we don’t know if pfSense is actually able to take the
load…
Can
anyone shed some light into this issues we are having?
Regards,
Jose
Hernandez
Software
and Systems Senior Engineer
VIDZONE
DIGITAL MEDIA
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---
Hi.
From
features list:
Inbound Load Balancing
Inbound
load balancing is used to distribute load between multiple servers. This is
commonly used with web servers, mail servers, and others. Servers that fail to
respond to ping requests or TCP port connections are removed from the pool.
Limitations
Equally
distributes load between all available servers - unable to unequally
distribute load between servers at this time.
Only
checks if the server responds to pings or TCP port connections. Cannot
check if the server is returning valid content.
More info on:
http://pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=43
Cheers.
Tebano.
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