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Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

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

A tiny but mighty tcp load balancer

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186 Replies
pixiel
Contributor
Contributor

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

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AdamVM
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Contributor

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

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JasonPenney
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Contributor

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.

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JasonPenney
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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.

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Fr3dY
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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!

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stevekdavis
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Contributor

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

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ehinkle
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

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

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somecallmemike
Contributor
Contributor

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!

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jwstern
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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?

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mrdenny
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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

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somecallmemike
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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.

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mrdenny
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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

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mrdenny
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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

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mrdenny
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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

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jwstern
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Contributor

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?

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hicksj
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

@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.

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mrdenny
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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

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KNardi
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

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

thanks,

Lou

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KNardi
Contributor
Contributor

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

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KNardi
Contributor
Contributor

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

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