Load Balancing in the Cloud Nick Bond Systems Engineer Zeus Technology

An awful lot of load balancers... Layer 7+ App. Delivery Controllers Layer 7 Traffic Managers © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide Layer 4 Load Balancers loadbalancer.org Linux Virtual Server / IPVS Coyotepoint Cisco CSS Nortel / Alteon Microsoft NLB Barracuda Cisco ACE Radware Citrix Netscaler F5 BigIP Zeus ZXTM Pound PerlBal HAProxy nginx

Why are advanced load balancers relevant? Cloud-based applications depend even more heavily on load-balancing and optimization than traditional enterprise applications Two customer examples running on clouds... © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide

Cloud-based applications depend even more heavily on load-balancing and optimization than traditional enterprise applications

Two customer examples running on clouds...

YottaServe VirtualIron-based private cloud Software L7+ Load Balancer YottaServe take resource-intensive Web2.0 applications that don’t scale and ‘fix’ them. © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide

VirtualIron-based private cloud

Software L7+ Load Balancer

YottaServe take resource-intensive Web2.0 applications that don’t scale and ‘fix’ them.

YottaServe © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide “ We were able to demonstrate that placing the load balancer in front of the application transformed the number of concurrent users from ten into thousands – with no application modifications needed.” Jeff Rhys-Jones, Founder, YottaServe Initial application tests show that response times rose sharply - up to over 100 seconds for a page request, as the number of users were ramped up to a test version of the website in the lab After application acceleration and traffic optimization, response times were less than 100 milliseconds - a complete performance transformation

Example – Gilt Groupe Flash-sales of designer and luxury goods; >400 single-threaded RoR servers Still was not enough during high traffic loads Now hosted in Joyent’s cloud © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide

Flash-sales of designer and luxury goods;

>400 single-threaded RoR servers

Still was not enough during high traffic loads

Now hosted in Joyent’s cloud

Gilt Groupe © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide ~400 RoR nodes Basic Load Balancer

Gilt Groupe © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide ~400 RoR nodes L7+ Load Balancer “ We found that with Content Caching and TrafficScript TM , the load balancer became an extension of our applications because of what it enabled us to do.” Phong Nguyen, VP R&D, Founder, Gilt Groupe

Load Balancers in the Cloud... Layer 7+ App. Delivery Controllers Layer 7 Traffic Managers © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide Layer 4 Load Balancers loadbalancer.org Linux Virtual Server / IPVS Coyotepoint Cisco CSS Nortel / Alteon Microsoft NLB Barracuda Cisco ACE Radware Citrix Netscaler F5 BigIP Zeus ZXTM Pound PerlBal HAProxy nginx

Load Balancers in the Cloud... Layer 7+ App. Delivery Controllers Layer 7 Traffic Managers © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide Layer 4 Load Balancers loadbalancer.org Linux Virtual Server / IPVS Coyotepoint Cisco CSS Nortel / Alteon Microsoft NLB Barracuda Cisco ACE Radware Citrix Netscaler F5 BigIP Zeus ZXTM Pound PerlBal HAProxy nginx Your choice of load balancers is limited... Shared L4 or dedicated L4, 7, 7+ load balancers

Recommendations to end users Consider load balancing capabilities when selecting a cloud provider Either: Design to basic L4 load balancing Select a software load balancer © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide

Consider load balancing capabilities when selecting a cloud provider

Either:

Design to basic L4 load balancing

Select a software load balancer

Recommendations to cloud providers Remember your business plan: Load balancing is a source of revenue: Differentiation, upsell, lock-in Don’t spend money on load balancing hardware! © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide

Remember your business plan:

Load balancing is a source of revenue:

Differentiation, upsell, lock-in

Don’t spend money on load balancing hardware!

Thank you! Nick Bond [email_address] www.zeus.com © Zeus Technology 2008 Slide

Nick Bond

[email_address]

www.zeus.com