Re: load balancing OpenLDAP

[Paul Dwerryhouse <paul@dwerryhouse.com.au>]

On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 01:53:43PM -0500, Raj Balasubramanian wrote:
> If I have two instances of an OpenLDAP (with data being in sync) can I 
> use an IP Sprayer to load balance for the tcp port 389 (or whatever my 
> setup is) ? Has anyone on the list seen this work or better yet 
> implemented in a production environment?

I've tried it out, and it would have worked, except the load balancers
that we were testing couldn't cope with the load that we were throwing
at them.

I'm still not sold on the idea that it's any better than just pointing
your applications at several LDAP servers - though I can see the benefit
if perhaps your servers aren't all equally powerful, and you'd like to
weight their usage appropriately, or if the application you're using
doesn't allow multiple LDAP servers to be specified.

I don't much like the idea that it creates a single point of failure.
I don't trust the failover mechanisms of the load balancers that I've
seen - I have seen too many of them fail at crucial times.

Cheers,

Paul

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