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LVS-HOWTO homepage

Joseph Mack

jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net

Feb 2006 Note: Mar 2014. These LVS HOWTOs are no longer being maintained.


Table of Contents

1. Linux Virtual Server (LVS) HOWTOs

1. Linux Virtual Server (LVS) HOWTOs

The Linux Virtual Server Project is a project started by Wensong Zhang.

An LVS is a group of servers that appear to the client as one large, fast, reliable (highly available) server. The core of the project is the ip_vs code, which runs on the LVS director. The director

  • is a layer 4 switch. It appears in the network as a router with slightly different rules from a normal router.
  • The director receives the connect request from the client and then choses one of the available backend servers (called realservers in LVS-speak), to service the client's request.
  • The realservers can be offering any of the services normally provided on a single server on the internet.
  • The individual realservers can be added and removed from the LVS without the client being aware of the changes in the LVS hardware, by commands given to the director. This allows realservers to be failed out, for routine maintenance and upgrades, or on hardware failure and for realservers to be added (or removed) in times of high (or low) load.

Because of the difficulty of compiling docbook, the LVS-HOWTOs are written in xml and translated to html by xsltproc. The xml is not quite docbook compatible (but is close).

  • LVS-HOWTO html, xml.

    This, together with the search engine at the top of the pages and links provided to other LVS documentation, is designed to tell you everything that is known about LVS.

  • LVS-mini-HOWTO

    • English: html, xml, pdf (provided by Cristhoper Jaa cristhoper (at) gmail (dot) com)
    • Portuguese Brazillian: html (translated by Carlos Cherem).
    • French: html, xml (translated by Maxime Kurkdjian, benjamin (dot) fabre (at) oxalide (dot) com, based on LVS-mini-HOWTO.2003.07).

    This contains the minimum information to setup a few simple demonstration working LVSs, without you being expected to understand the inner workings of LVS.

  • LVS-HOWTOs tarball

    This contains the current HOWTOs in xml (and html) together with the xsl and Makefiles required to make the html using xsltproc.

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