Local Director Load Balancing question

[jrahl]

Using IOS 3.2.2

I have a local director 416 with 2 real servers. I would like to send all traffic to 1 server and if it fails to switch over to the secondary server. The way I see to do it is to use weighted load balancing and set the weight of the 2nd server to zero. But if the primary server fails what will happen since the secondary server has a weight of zero.

Jason

[d.parks]

I've used the backup command for this in the past.

backup "real-id" "backup-id"

This should do what you need it to, but you may be limited to two servers.

[jrahl]

Thanks for the quick response

If what I want to accomplish is a failover rather than load balancing is this the "proper" way to do it with LocalDirector I.E. using the weight command to set a prefered server and then using backup command to perform failover?

Jason

[d.parks · Accepted solution]

Not being a Cisco employee, I guess I can't define what "proper" is, but with the backup command, you don't need to play with the weights at all.

You just bind the primary real server to the virtual, then assign a backup to the primary. The backup server does not get directly bound to the virtual, so the only way it's going to get any traffic is if the primary server is down.