RE: performance issue behind a a load balancer 2.3.32

["Clowser, Jeff" <jeff_clowser@fanniemae.com>]

> Why bother with the load balancer? I am curious, I am sure there is a
> reason, but it isn't making a lot of sense to me. You can 
> either do round
> robin dns, or just pass out the 3 read server addy's to the 
> clients for
> failover (and change the order for real poor mans load balancing.)

Things DNS RR does not allow that a load balancer does (just off the top
of my head):
1.  Dynamically removing a node if it goes down/crashes (DNS RR slows
things down because clients need to time out for a failed server,
assuming clients do properly time out and fail over, which is not a
guarantee by any means - lots of broken clients wrt DNS RR out there).
2.  Easily removing a node for maintenance (DNS RR requires modifying
DNS, waiting for TTLs, hoping none of the clients ignore TTLs - again,
lots of broken clients out there, etc).
3.  Can't account for differing load or connection levels to backend
servers.
4.  Hiding the actual servers and/or number of servers in the cluster.

I'm sure there are other benefits I'vve forgotten.