Difference between revisions of "FAQ"

Revision as of 12:04, 3 June 2005

What's LVS?

LVS stands for Linux Virtual Server, which is a highly scalable and highly available server built on a cluster of real servers, with the load balancer running on the Linux operating system. Users interact as if it were a single virtual server.

Is LVS software free?

Yes! All LVS software is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Is there a FreeBSD port of LVS software?

Yes, there is a FreeBSD port of IPVS, which supports the LVS/DR and LVS/TUN methods now. See the LVS On FreeBSD page for more information.

How is the concurrent processing performance of current LVS software?

The ultimate performance of LVS depends on hardware that LVS runs on. An ordinary box with a single Pentium III processor and 100Mbps NIC card running LVS/DR can handle about 10,000 connections per second for web service. We have heard that a powerful box with good hardware and kernel tuning achieved 50,000 connections per second.

Can LVS handle more than 1 million simultaneous connections?

Yes, LVS can handle much more than 1 million simultaneous connections. One connection just costs 128 bytes in the LVS box, so an LVS box with 1G memory can handle more than 8 million simultaneous connections.

Does LVS cluster support Linux servers only?

No, real servers can almost run any operating systems in a LVS cluster, such as Linux, BSDs, Solaris, and Windows. LVS/NAT balance servers of the operating systems having TCP/IP support, LVS/TUN requires servers having IP Tunneling protocol, and LVS/DR requires servers having a non-arp device. Almost all the modern operating systems support non-arp device.