Re: TCP/IP line Load balancing

[Larry Bolhuis <lbolhuis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> As you all know the AS400 supports multiple NIC's (thank god). Currently I am
> "mach" load balancing by having different groups access the 400 through a
> particular NIC. Is anyone familiar with a way (third party or not) to load
> balance these NIC's by defining if one NIC is busy to use another, etc.
> Any help you could give would be appreciated.

  I have worked with this support somewhat a couple months back.  For inbound
access this *virtualip controller does you no good at all.  The way the virtual
address gets defined is that say you have three NICs all on the same subnet with
addresses: 192.168.1.10, .11 and .12 respectively.  You could create a 
*VIRTUALIP
interface with address 192.168.1.1 that then hangs in limbo.  After this you can
then associate this interface with each of the three physical interfaces (You
must stop them to do this). 

  Having done the above, what have you gained???  Well theoretically your
ourbound traffice could all come from the .1 address and should then balance
across the available associated interfaces.  Note that you cannot ping the
*virtualip address from outside the AS/400 because that address does NOT sit on
the network it is behind the three addresses.

  Now for INbound traffic the solution is somewhat different.  Simply put all
three addresses (.10, .11, and .12) into the DNS entry for your AS/400.  The DNS
should then hand them out round robbin essentially doing what you have been
manually doing.  The benefits of course are a) It's more automatic, b) you can
change the AS/400 addresses by changing the DNS only, c) You could add another
address or remove one by changing only the DNS.  Note that you do NOT need the
*virtualip interface to do this.

 HTH - Larry

ps Hopefully the Redbook George listed will give additional tips on Load
Balancing.

-- 
Larry Bolhuis         |  What do you want to reload today???
Arbor Solutions, Inc  |
(616) 451-2500        |  
(616) 451-2571 -fax   | 
lbolhuis@arbsol.com   |
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