OpenBSD Acquires IP Load Balancing

xarc writes "OpenBSD 3.2-current has acquired IP load balancing support via its packet filter, PF. This is a great step for those of us who prefer OpenBSD, but are dependent on other OSes and software (such as Linux's Linux Virtual Server) to provide similar functionality."

Comments

uhm

[Anonymous Coward]

did you even read the link you posted? this is a far cry from load balancing.

Re:uhm

[sporty]

Far cry nothing. Load balancers do use the roundrobin and hash algorithms.

Re:uhm

[psyconaut]

True, load balancers do use round-robin and hash algorithms....but these days a load balancer also implies some logic to stop it forwarding requests to a none-active device. i.e. some sort of keep-alive mechanism.

But, to see this is OpenBSD is nice. I might actually consider writing some hooks myself to make it a bit more usable.

-psy

Re:uhm

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what userland script should do ... This should not be inside the kernel.

Re:uhm

[evil_pb]

And it's also just a first update into the CVS tree, mid-release, which already does MOST of what a Load Balancer would do! It may not detect down hosts (yet), but given the usual quality and completeness of OpenBSD code I suspect by 3.3 this will be ready for prime time. I'm not sure what else you think it's missing - load balancers are not highly complex pieces of equipment.

And this isn't just an IPfilter theft like someone else had stated. PF is a complete re-write, with dramatic performance gains and cleaner integration into the system. (By gains, I'm talking about documented increases by orders of magnitude, with large rulebases.) I suspect the LB code is no different, probably all new code. It'e been submitted by Daniel Hartmier as well, who wrote PF, so I'm fairly confident that the code won't suck.

Now I just want to see failover capability in PF. I know the VRRP licensing BS is what is stopping that effort right now, but I hope that can be solved soon (a new protocol needs to be created IMO). The only reason OpenBSD can't be deployed in many areas is the lack of failover, that's such a critical piece of infrastructure these days that it's necessary.

secnod psot

[Anonymous Coward]

theo deratt is a homo.

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally you can ditch Linux, and go to an archaic dying OS that doesn't do SMP or journalled file systems or many embedded processors out there.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

SMP is very rarely needed. Clusters work quite well and keep costs lower too.

Soft Updates are superior to journaling filesystems performance-wise and are more stable. So, that would make Linux the dying OS, and BSD several steps ahead.

Does you linux system crash so much that you need fsck to be so much faster? Switch to BSD, it won't be crashing all the time on you.

You know, there are tons of incredibly popular OSes out there that don't do embedded processing at all. Good luck sticking Solaris in a low-end embedded platform. I'm sure Windows is so popular because it's so great on embedded systems.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

* You don't need journaling fs. Softupdate work perfectly, if not better. Only background fsck is needed.

* You don't always need SMP.

* OpenBSD can easily be ported to many embedded processors out there, thanks to the super portable NetBSD.

wait for it

[JamesCronus]

hang on, where's the obligitory " BSD is dead" post?, if its dead, how come stuff like this is getting released, it looks like bsd is focusing on its niche market, servers, i'd say load balancing is quite important there..

Re:wait for it

[rmezzari]

BSD is dead!

hope that makes you fell better!

Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

hope that makes you fell better!

Thanks to you I fell wonderfully. It was quite a spill. I think I sprained my ankle.

Thanks again!

5th Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully...

BT

1st POST?

[Anonymous Coward]

How late was I?

ipfilter anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it has taken them this long to import the ipfilter code without looking like they copied it? ;)

Re:ipfilter anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't copy the code from ipfilter. It supports much more than just plain round-robin.

Addresses can be allocated in a number of ways:
- masking out the network portion of the address and replacing it
- randomly assigning an address in the block
- hashing the source address and a key to determine the redirection address
- iterating through the addresses sequentially (this is the only allocation scheme which works when a list of addresses is specified)

It also supports load balancing on route-to, dup-to and reply-to. Again something that ipfilter doesn't.

Thanks for pointing this out

[Anonymous Coward]

That the first letters of the words "packet filter" are PF.

Genius.

A well thought out move

[PFAK]

This is good on Theo's & OpenBSD's part to have load balancing in the codebase, this should fill a niche in the server market, and maybe catch OpenBSD up to Linux a tad more.

Give them credit, they have one of the most mature and stable OS'es out there. And Theo is sure smart.

Oh, yeah and the best thing. It's Canadian ;)

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying