Replace Physical Load Balancer?

[rbmadison]

We have 2 servers with a physical load balancer in front. Is there any way I can convert these to virtual machines on 2 separate hosts and build a Virtual Switch to do the load balancing or will I still need the physical load balancer? I see load balancing as an option when setting up a virtual switch.

Thanks

[RParker]

Load Balancing on the switch is for outgoing traffic only. And it's not the best of load balancers. If you have a need for load balancing, I would stay stick with the external physical ones.

[rriva]

Agree with RParker, but it depends on which OS you have on VM.

If you are using Windows 2003 server you can use NLB Service to create a Network Load Balancing Cluster between two or more VM and avoid to use an external balancer.

Look at : Migrating from physical NLB device[Migrating from physical NLB device|c-2412]

Getting NLB running on ESX is a trick and requires some specific

VSwitch settings. In general if you plan to use NLB unicast mode, you

must run all members of the NLB cluster on the same virtual switch.

Bye

R

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