MALAYSIAN PUBLIC SECTOR

OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (OSS)
PROGRAM

LINUX VIRTUAL SERVER
BENCHMARK REPORT
 MARCH 2008
Linux Virtual Server

COPYRIGHT

The copyright to this document is owned by the Government of Malaysia

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Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my
Linux Virtual Server

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
COPYRIGHT 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

1. INTRODUCTION 4
2. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION 4
3. SCOPE OF WORK 4
4. SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE PROVIDED FROM OSCC 5
5. COMPARISON 6
5.1 IP LOAD BALANCING TECHNIQUES 6
5.2 CONNECTION SCHEDULE 8
6. RESULT AND CONCLUSION 9
7. REFERENCES 10

3
Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my
Linux Virtual Server

1. INTRODUCTION

Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and/or availability over that provided by a single
computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single computers of comparable speed
or availability. In computing, load balancing is a technique used to spread workload among many
processes, computers, networks, disks or other resources, so that no single resource is overloaded. The
Linux Virtual Server (LVS) as an advanced load balancing solution can be used to build highly scalable
and highly available network services.

2. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

Web-based application is one of the service provided at OSCC, MAMPU. Examples of web-based
application are OSCC portal home and Knowledge Bank. OSCC allocates two servers for web-based
applications. With increasing demands from users on OSS applications. OSCC's web-based servers are
going to be overwhelmed with workload and thus resulting in slower response times. A cost-effective
solution is needed to address this problem before it getting serious.

3. SCOPE OF WORK

The scope of work are as follows:

1. To identify suitable IP load balancing techniques using Linux Virtual Server to fully utilize the
OSCC's hardware capacity.
2. To identify suitable connection scheduling algorithm using Linux Virtual Server to fully utilize
the OSCC's hardware capacity.
3. To identify the IP load balancing technique and connection scheduling that could help to
increase network scalabality.

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Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my
Linux Virtual Server

4. SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE PROVIDED FROM OSCC

OSCC has allocated 2 unit of servers to be used for the project and both servers will have roughly the
same capacity. Both servers are fixed with two Network Interface Cards (NICs), one interface on the
Internet (public network) and one on the private network, enabling them to regulate traffic between the
two networks. One PC will be used as the load balancer. Load balancer will delegate tasks between the
two servers.

For each servers will be installed with CentOS5 as its operating system.

Figure 4.1 General architecture of LVS

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Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my
Linux Virtual Server

5. COMPARISON

5.1 IP LOAD BALANCING TECHNIQUES

The cluster running Linux Virtual Server acts as a load balancer of network connections from
clients which uses a single IP address for a service. Load balancer and servers are using IP load
balancing technique to communicate with each other.

Below is comparison table on IP load balancing techniques:

Linux Virtual Server via  Linux Virtual Server via  Linux Virtual Server via 

Network Address  IP Tunneling Direct Routing
Translation (NAT)

Technique  NAT allows a single
definition device, such as a router, to
act as an agent between the
public network and a
private network
IP tunneling is a techniques
to encapsulate IP datagram
within IP datagram, which
allows datagrams destined
for one IP address to be
wrapped and redirected to
another IP address
Real servers have their
loopback alias interfaces
configured with the virtual
IP address and the load
balancer has an interfaces
configured with the virtual
IP address to accept
incoming packets

Connection Load balancer and real  Load balancer and real Load balancer and the real
servers are interconnected  server are connected by servers must have one of
by hub or switch LAN or WAN their interfaces physically
linked by an uninterrupted
segment of LAN such as
hub or switch

Server  Servers support  Servers support LVS via Direct Routing

requirement Transmission Control  Transmission Control require the server OS has
Protocol/ Internet Protocol  Protocol/ Internet Protocol loopback alias interface
(TCP/IP) (TCP/IP) that does not do ARP
response

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Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my
Linux Virtual Server

Work flow LVS router receives the
request and routes it to the
appropriate server. Then,
the real server processes
the request and returns the
packets to the LVS router
which uses NAT to replace
the address of the real
server in the packets with
the LVS routers public
Virtual IP address
The load balancer tunnels
the request packets to the
different servers, and the
servers process the
requests and return the
results to the client directly
The load balancer
processes only the client-
to-server half of a
connection, and the
response packets can
follow separate network
routes to the clients

Server gateway The load balancer will act Each real server can have Each real server can have
as gateway its own router as gateway its own router as gateway

Scalability Support minimum number Support large number of Support large number of
of servers servers servers

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Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my
Linux Virtual Server

5.2 CONNECTION SCHEDULE

The structure that the IP Virtual Server (IPVS) table takes depends on the scheduling algorithm
that the administrator chooses for any given virtual server. Below are comparison table on
connection scheduling algorithm:

Round-robin algorithm Weighted round-robin Least-connection

Algorithm algorithm

Definition Simplest scheduling The weighted round-robin Least-connection

algorithm directs the
network connections to the
different servers in the
cluster
scheduling can treat the
real severs of different
processing capacities
scheduling algorithm
directs network
connections with the least
number of active
connections

Work flow The round-robin DNS
resolves the single domain
to the different IP
addresses, the scheduling
granularity is per host, and
the caching of DNS hinder
the algorithm take effect.
Round-robin scheduling is
based on first-come first-
served queuing
Servers with higher
weights receives new
connections first and get
more connections than
servers with lower weights,
and servers with equal
weights can get an equal
distributions of new
equations
Load balancer with least-
connection schedule will
distributes more requests
to real server with fewer
active connections by
keeping track of live
connections to the real
servers through the IP
Virtual Server (IPVS)
table

Scheduling Static Dynamic Dynamic

Server capacity Each node should have Vary processing capacity
equal processing capacity for each node because we
(each node) because it would lead to could assign weight that
load imbalance indicates its processing
capacity
Each node should have
equal processing capacity
because it would lead to
load imbalance

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Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my
Linux Virtual Server

6. RESULT AND CONCLUSION

Reasons for using LVS:

1. The architecture of server cluster is fully transparent to end users, and the users interact with
the cluster system as if it were only a single high-performance virtual server.
2. Implementation of three-tier architecture which will prevent clients from directly contacting
servers directly, which may have security benefits by hiding the structure of the internal
network and preventing attacks on the kernel’s network stack.
3. High availability is provided by detecting node or daemon failures and reconfiguring the system 
appropriately.

After comparing IP load balancing techniques provided with the software and hardware available for
the project, we could conclude that Linux Virtual Server via IP Tunneling suit best for the project.
Below are the reasons for choosing LVS via IP Tunneling:
1. Since the load balancer only handle incoming request packets and real servers will response 
directly   to   the   clients,   hence   load   balancer   will   not   overloaded   with   work   and   it   increase 
scalability on the network
2. We also could build a virtual proxy server, because when the proxy servers get request, it can 
access the Internet directly to fetch objects and return them directly to the users. 

We will be using least-connection scheduling for the IPVS table. Below are the reasons for choosing
least-connection for the connection scheduling use in Linux Virtual Server:
1. The servers provided from OSCC have roughly the same capacity, hence it is suitable to apply
least-connection scheduling for the IPVS table.
2. Least-connection scheduling can direct end-users service requests to the servers that are least
busy and therefore it capable of providing fastest response times.
3. It could increase network scalability because it can delegate works better in the cluster system.

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Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my
Linux Virtual Server

7. REFERENCE

1. Linux Virtual Server Administration. CentOS. January 15, 2008. <http://www.centos.org/docs/5/

html/5.1/Virtual_Server_Administration/>
2. Zhang, Wensong. Linux Virtual Server for Scalable Network Service. National Laboratory for
Parallel & Distributed Processing, Hunan, China. November 2003. February 20, 2008.
<www.linuxvirtualserver.org/ols/lvs.ps.gz>
3. The Linux Virtual Server Project. February 22, 2008. <http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org>

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Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), 3rd Floor, Apt E302­E304, Lot 12076, Persiaran APEC, 
Enterprise Building, 63000 Cyberjaya Selangor, Malaysia
Ph:+603 83191200 Email: contact@oscc.org.my Website: http://www.oscc.org.my