Barracuda Load Balancer Online Demo Guide

Transcription

1 Barracuda Load Balancer Online Demo Guide Rev 1.3 October 04, 2012 Product Introduction The Barracuda Networks Load Balancer provides comprehensive IP load balancing capabilities to any IP-based application, including: Internet sites with high traffic requirements, such as Web, FTP, media streaming, and content delivery networks Microsoft productivity tools like Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync. Hosted applications using thin-client architectures, like Windows Terminal Services Other IP services requiring optimal performance, including SMTP, DNS, RADIUS, and TFTP Qualifying questions 1. What types of servers are you trying to load balance? a. If they say links, ISPs, or internet connections, the customer needs a Barracuda Link Balancer, NOT a Barracuda Load Balancer 2. How many real servers are you going to load balance? a. Anything over 5 push to a How much traffic do you expect to see with your server farm? a. Over 50 mbps, push to 340 b. Over 500 mbps, push to 440 c. Around 1 Gbps or higher, push to Are you interested in high availability or the idea of pairing two load balancers in an active/passive configuration? a. High Availability customers should be quoted a pair of 340s, unless it is an ISP or MSP/ quote pairs of 440s 5. What about disaster recovery across data centers? a. Customers should be quoted a pair of 440s or 640s for GSLB If they are qualified, ask them if they have a Web browser open and a couple minutes for a quick walk through Starting the Online LB Demo Start by going to demo.barracuda.com: Go to: Barracuda Networks 1

2 Now click the Barracuda Load Balancer demo and log in with the following credentials. User name: guest Password: guest Before we begin, we are logging into the Barracuda Load Balancer as a guest. Feel free to walk around when we are done. If you are walking around and want to know exactly what you are looking at, simply hit a question mark on the right-hand side of the page and a popup window will appear with a detailed explanation of the tab. Dashboard & Status Page Status page This is the dashboard of your Barracuda Load Balancer. The traffic summary statistics section on the top left shows you how many requests have come in for the configured services. For example, this unit shows the daily and hourly number of request for CorpHTTP service. It also shows the number of security violations detected by the built in Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and also the number of critical events such as servers going down or coming back up. Right below the traffic statistics we provide the status of your subscriptions. On the right we have the system Performance Statistics providing a composite view of the Load Balancer metrics such as active services, operational servers, system load and CPU temperature. Just below the Performance Statistics you will see the Interfaces module. Interfaces connected to the network are indicated with the green color and if the interfaces are not connected they are greyed out. If you hover the cursor on an interface information about the interface is displayed. Barracuda Networks 2

3 The next graphs on the page provide information about the total traffic flowing through the load balancer and its break down. The graphs can be viewed on a per-hour, per-day or per-month basis. Below that graph is a series graph on HTTP Caching and Compression. The caching graph shows the amount traffic served by the cache on the Load Balancer. On the Compression graph, it shows how much outbound traffic is reduced. Minimizing traffic through compression is especially important for things like mobile web browsing where connections may be slow. Adding and Configuring Load Balancing Services Let s start by showing you how easy it is to set up services in the Barracuda Load Balancer. Services page [Basic Services] This is the place where you configure your services. The load balancer normally sits infront of your servers, receives traffic from the clients and then distributes it to the servers. For this, the administrator needs to configure a service which is just an IP address with a port on which the load balancer will receive the traffic and servers which will serve the client requests. For example, Corporate HTTPS receives traffic on and distributes it to servers on , & Add New Service module has a Basic and an Advanced View. What you are seeing is the Advanced View. You can configure different types of services using IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, select the certificate if the service is an SSL service and also associate it to the port it should be listening on. In the Basic view, administrator can only configure simple, non-ssl services so you will not see the drop downs for IPv4 / IPv6 selection, the SSL Certificate or Interface. Click on the Auto-Discover button on the right. This brings up a list of all the servers available to the unit and you can click select the ones you want to associate with the service. Barracuda Networks 3

4 Barracuda Load Balancer supports Layer 7 content routing. You can use this capability to route traffic based on domain name, HTTP headers or URLs to a specified set of servers. As you would note in the Corporate HTTPS service there is a content rule for partners.barracuda.com which would ensure all traffic coming to that domain is routed to the server where the partner portal is deployed. Edit popup for service [click on paper/pencil icon] The load balancer has many algorithms to distribute traffic such as round robin or least request. In addition basic algorithms it has Adaptive Scheduling capabilities like the native integration with Windows Remote Desktop servers to see which server has most number of active sessions or by doing SNMP query to the back end servers. The load balancer continuously monitors the servers to ensure that it is forwarding requests to only those servers that are currently operational and responding properly. To monitor the server just checking connectivity to the server is not sufficient as the server may be reachable by the Web server may be down. So to do the monitoring properly the Barracuda Load Balancer has 28 different types of monitors to check the server as well as the application. Basic Server Health: You can view the status of the monitors either by service (application) or by servers. It also tells you the load across the individual servers. If an administrator sees any of the servers becoming overloaded he can add more servers or run diagnostics on the servers. In case, a server has to be taken down for maintenance the administrator can put that server in the maintenance mode. This ensures that any active connections being served by the server are still served but no new connections are established to it. This way, it slowly drains out the traffic to the given server and once the server is free it can be powered down or taken out for maintenance. Apart from improving your application uptimes, if you are deploying HTTP applications, the Barracuda Load Balancer can also speed them up, specifically reduce the response time for HTTP applications. Website HTTP Caching: Caching is an important functionality for Layer 7 Load balancing. If you are balancing web servers, caching static files such as image files accelerates application delivery by offloading traffic onto the Barracuda Load Balancer Website HTTP Compression: Most browsers already have build in compression capabilities. For slow web connections such as mobile phones, compression improves user experience by minimizing the amount of data sent to the end client. Finally the Barracuda Load Balancer can also rewrite HTTP traffic on the fly for Models 440 & 660. High Availability In today s internet-driven world, accessibility, continuity and uptime are key factors for any application. Since the Load Balancer is part of the critical data path, it is recommended that the Load Balancer by set up in a high availability pair. Advanced High Availability: Two Barracuda Load Balancers can be deployed in an active passive deployment mode to create a high availability solution. If redundancy across data center is a key functionality, models 440 & 640 have disaster recovery capabilities to allow you to failover to a backup data centers using Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB). Advanced GSLB Services (Model 440 & 640): This screen configures the Global Server Load Balancing functionality of the Barracuda Load Balancer. GSLB allows you to specify that traffic be directed to a site based on one of three Response Policies: GEO IP will route requests based on a site s geographic distance to the list of servers Region Only will route requests based on the region of the system making the request. You can create custom Regions in the GSLB Settings screen. Barracuda Networks 4

5 Priority will route requests based on priority set manually by the administrator. Rev 1.3 October 04, 2012 Advanced->GSLB Settings (Model 440 & 640): This screen allows you to create your own custom DNS Regions. It also allows you configure DNS Service IP. Administration Now that we have shown you how easy it is to set up services on the Barracuda Load Balancer and how easy it is to set up High Availability, let s walk you through on the administration capabilities on the Barracuda Load Balancer. Basic IP Configuration page: This is the Basic IP configuration for the load balancer. The WAN interface becomes your unique management IP address or the address you will access the Web user interface, the load balancer also uses the WAN interface for High Availability heartbeats. The LAN interface becomes the default gateway for your Load Balanced network (separate logical network route path configuration). Basic Administration page: This is the configuration screen for the general system administration tasks such as changing the administrative password, setting system time, and defining the administrative Access List (ACL). You can also configure your address for notifications when real servers fail Basic Certificates page: In case you are load balancing HTTPS traffic, you would have to install digital certificates for those services on the Balancer. That is done on this page. Advanced Backup: This screen provides a way to backup your Barracuda Load Balancer configuration should you need to restore this at anytime. Also in this page is the ability to automate the back-up either daily or weekly. Advanced Energize Update: This is our Energize Update page, when you buy our box you pay an initial price for the hardware and then a yearly subscription, called the energize update. The Energize Update provides you with hourly updates to the intrusion prevention system to protect your network from malicious attacks such as buffer overflows, protocol and application specific attacks, as well as operating system attacks. Also included is access to our 24/7 over the phone tech support and access to all new firmware updates as they are released. You can use this page to ensure your using the latest energize update release or revert back to an older version as well change the frequency of your updates from hourly to daily or off (we recommend hourly). Advanced Firmware: Included as part of your yearly subscription the firmware updates enable us to continue to improve the performance and features of the Barracuda Load Balancer even after you have bought it. In this page you can apply new firmware releases or revert to a previous version, additionally you can open the view release notes and see a complete history of every single, fix, patch & enhancement we have made to the product since it was first released Advanced Cloud Control: Multiple units of Barracuda Load Balancers can be connected to the Barracuda Control Center to monitor the units as well as generate aggregated reports across all units. OPTIONAL Section [Notes: These are notes for additional configuration in the Barracuda Load Balancer and should be used if someone asks what these configurations mean] There are multiple other capabilities that this load balancer has and I would be more than happy to show them to you. Do let me know if there is any specific feature that you would like to know more about? Basic Intrusion Prevention page: The Barracuda Load Balancer has an integrated Intrusion Prevention System. When IPS in enabled for a service all the traffic for that service is checked for harmful content and any traffic deemed dangerous is blocked. IPS can be enabled on a per service basis. The Barracuda Load Balancer regularly receives updates from Barracuda Central to keep its security definitions up to date. Barracuda Networks 5

6 Basic Event Log page: The Event Log maintains a list of all noteworthy events that affect the Barracuda Load Balancer, such as attacks upon various Services and status changes for a Real Server. Additionally events detected by the Intrusion Prevention System will also be logged with a 1-5 severity rating. Advanced Advanced Networking: In some deployments there is a need to configure additional routes to ensure that the Barracuda Load Balancer is able to reach the backend servers. This page allows you to configure VLANs (Model 340 & above), static routes and bonded interfaces (model 640 only) on the Barracuda Load Balancer. Advanced SNMP Configuration: Administrators can receive system events such a real server has gone down or the CPU temperature is critically high via SNMP traps. Advanced Syslog: All system logs can be sent out to a log server via syslog Advanced Secure Administration: This is the screen to configure the SSL management interface for the Barracuda Load Balancer. Advanced Troubleshooting: This screen provides simple tools to help you diagnose any problems with your configuration; you can also connect to Barracuda Central for support Composite Monitoring [Advanced Monitor Groups]: The health of many modern applications depends on multiple monitor metrics and not a single one. Sometimes you may need to group a set of related services together in order to truly know the health of the applications. For example, the health of Microsoft Exchange depends on the health of Outlook Web Access, MAPI, DCOM, Outlook Anywhere etc. Having a monitor that just checks one of these is not enough. You can create compound monitors which is a group of multiple monitors each of which monitors a different aspect of the service to obtain a service wide status view. You can do this under Advanced Monitor Groups. 6 (888) sales@vology.com