Building Two-Node Directors/Real Servers using LVS and Keepalived

Introduction

This guide is a brief explanation on getting a two node director/real server setup going using LVS and keepalived.

This is an adaptation of the information at Ultra Monkey: Streamline High Availablility and Load Balancing to work with keepalived.

It is primarily targeted at RHEL3/4 (RedHat Enterprise Linux).

Goal

Setup a two node LVS cluster with Apache as the virtualised services, with only two nodes operating as both directors and real servers. Setup healthchecking of services (httpd). Setup lvs-syncing of connections (ipvsadm sync daemon).

Knowledge Required

Understanding of Layer 3 load balancing. Understanding of Linux LVS. Understanding of Apache configuration.

Components Required

Base installation of RHEL3/4.
RPM Packages for httpd.
RPM Packages for keepalived.
RPM Packages for ipvsadm.

Architecture