Load Balance two FreeRADIUS servers (question)

[Julson, Jim]

Hi Aldo,

Sorry for the duplicate email on my end, but the formatting was so bad I had to fix and resend.

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1.- What load balancer is recommended? I would suppose that not all of them will load balance the UDP RADIUS well, I see many appliance, brands, etc.. just a thought

ANSWER:  I use a pair of High Availability Kemp LM 2600's in my environment and they work like a charm.  I've also used Barracuda appliances, and F5's.  Of all of them, the Kemps were the cheapest to purchase, and I've been really happy with their support and service.
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2.- Will this scenario cover the fail-over part? when one of my two FreeRADIUS servers stop working, or restart, or crash will the load balancer appliance start sending packets only to the live server until it gets back up?

ANSWER:  Yes it will.  Part of the logic built into the load balancers is all about uptime.  It's a little off topic here, but the answer is absolutely yes on all counts.
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3.- Isn't the load balancer a single point of failure itself? How is this potential problem usually addressed?

ANSWER:  Yes and No...It is if you only purchase 1 load balancer.  Whenever you are putting together a redundant HA environment, you always buy two.  100% of the LB's out there are designed to work in a "HA" (High Availability) partnership.
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Hope that helps.



From: freeradius-users-bounces+jjulson=marketron.com at lists.freeradius.org<mailto:freeradius-users-bounces+jjulson=marketron.com at lists.freeradius.org> [mailto:freeradius-users-bounces+jjulson=marketron.com at lists.freeradius.org]<mailto:[mailto:freeradius-users-bounces+jjulson=marketron.com at lists.freeradius.org]> On Behalf Of Aldo Zavala
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 1:27 AM
To: freeradius-users at lists.freeradius.org<mailto:freeradius-users at lists.freeradius.org>
Subject: Load Balance two FreeRADIUS servers (question)

Hi, I have reading few posts that ask how to Load Balance Two or more FreeRADIUS servers, and usually the expert's (Alan and others) answer is  to put a load balancer in front of the FreeRADIUS servers, I will trust you but I still have some questions about this:

1.- What load balancer is recommended? I would suppose that not all of them will load balance the UDP RADIUS well, I see many appliance, brands, etc.. just a thought

2.- Will this scenario cover the fail-over part? when one of my two FreeRADIUS servers stop working, or restart, or crash will the load balancer appliance start sending packets only to the live server until it gets back up?

3.- Isn't the load balancer a single point of failure itself? How is this potential problem usually addressed?

Thanks!!

Aldo Zavala

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