H3C Technologies H3C SecPath F1000-E - Manual (Page 866)

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Load Balancing Configuration
NOTE:
Only the SecPath F5000-A5 supports for link load balancing.
Load Balancing Overview
Load balancing (referred to as LB hereinafter) is a cluster technology to distribute some specific services
such as network services and network traffic among multiple network devices (for example servers and
firewalls) or multiple links, thus enhancing service processing capability and ensuring high reliability of
services.
LB features the following advantages:
• High performance: LB distributes services to multiple network devices or links, enhancing the
performance of the whole system.
• Scalability: LB facilitates the addition of network devices or links in a cluster, thus meeting the
ever-increasing service requirements for servers, without decreasing service quality.
• Reliability: Failure of a single or multiple devices or links will not result in service interruption,
enhancing the reliability of the entire system.
• Manageability: Administration is performed only on LB-enabled device(s), and devices or links
need only common configuration and maintenance.
• Transparency: A cluster is like a device or link with high availability and performance, and users
are not aware of and do not care the specific network structure. In addition, increase or decrease
of devices or links will not affect normal services.
Classification of LB
LB generally falls into three types:
• Server load balancing
• Firewall load balancing
• Link load balancing
These three types of load balancing can be applied in the following scenarios:
• Server load balancing: Data centers generally adopt server load balancing for networking.
Network services are distributed to multiple servers to enhance service processing capabilities of
the data centers.
• Firewall load balancing: In the networks where firewall processing capabilities have become the
bottleneck, firewall load balancing can be adopted to balance the network traffic among multiple
firewalls, thus to enhance the processing capabilities of firewalls.
• Link load balancing: Link load balancing can be applied in a network environment where there are
multiple carrier interfaces to implement dynamic selection of links, thus enhancing the service
reliability.