load balancing without load balancer

[petercinvest]

we don't have load balancer, we have two 3850 switch, how to design the load-balancing?

[devils_advocate]

What exactly are you trying to load balance?

The 3850's can be stacked so the become one 'logical' switch.

Are you trying to load balance through the 3850's to a router?

[petercinvest]

yes, we want both router load balance as well as switch load balance

[devils_advocate]

What router do you have?

If you stack the 3850's together using the Stacking cables, they will effticely load balance if you create an etherchannel to another device that supports it.

[petercinvest]

ISR G2 1941 router, we want router load balance as well.

what's the difference between we use F5 load balancer and above stack solution in terms of load balancing

[Jon Marshall]

A very big difference.

Using etherchannel is not really true load balancing, it just puts different flows on different links.

Alternatively if your 3850s are routing for vlans then you can connect the router with two L3 P2P links and then both links will be used.

But even this is simply alternating between the links based on destination IP address.

A true load balancer is doing a lot more and gives you much more control over what is sent where.

But you haven't explained exactly what you are trying to do ie. just saying load balancing can mean any number of things so it's difficult to suggest anything at the moment.

Jon

[Ganesh Hariharan]

ISR G2 1941 router, we want router load balance as well.what's the difference between we use F5 load balancer and above stack solution in terms of load balancing

Hello ,

Agree with Jon comments and few more stuuf to add.

F5 load balancers are application level load balancer with L4-L7 capabilty by load balancing based on cookie ,RR or source ip etc..Lots of things can be achived having F5 with stack solution we are making two switch a single stack of more switch ports.

Come out what excatly you want to load balance , like user traffic to server or to use both the switches up links or switches..

Hope it Helps..

-GI

Rate if it Helps..