Chapter 2. Initial Load Balancer Add-On Configuration
After installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you must take some basic steps to set up the LVS router and the real servers. This chapter covers these initial steps in detail.
Note
The LVS router node that becomes the active node once Load Balancer Add-On is started is also referred to as the primary node. When configuring Load Balancer Add-On, use the Piranha Configuration Tool on the primary node.
2.1. Configuring Services on the LVS Router
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program installs all of the components needed to set up Load Balancer Add-On, but the appropriate services must be activated before configuring Load Balancer Add-On. For the LVS router, set the appropriate services to start at boot time. There are three primary tools available for setting services to activate at boot time under Red Hat Enterprise Linux : the command line program
chkconfig, the ncurses-based program ntsysv, and the graphical Services Configuration Tool. All of these tools require root access.
Note
To attain root access, open a shell prompt and use the
su - command followed by the root password. For example:
$su -Password:root password
On the LVS router, there are three services which need to be set to activate at boot time:
- The
piranha-guiservice (primary node only) - The
pulseservice - The
sshdservice
If you are clustering multi-port services or using firewall marks, you must also enable the
iptables service.
It is best to set these services to activate in both runlevel 3 and runlevel 5. To accomplish this using
chkconfig, type the following command for each service:
/sbin/chkconfig --level 35 daemon on
In the above command, replace daemon with the name of the service you are activating. To get a list of services on the system as well as what runlevel they are set to activate on, issue the following command:
/sbin/chkconfig --list
Warning
Turning any of the above services on using
chkconfig does not actually start the daemon. To do this use the /sbin/service command. See Section 2.3, “Starting the Piranha Configuration Tool Service” for an example of how to use the /sbin/service command.
