Load balancing is critical in today’s storage environment as it ensures that as queries and requests come in, any single server won’t be overloaded and unable to perform the task at hand. Load balancers efficiently distribute incoming network traffic across a server pool so that it does not need to be manually inputted.
Kemp LoadMaster is a load balancer that works with a myriad of different technologies, for example, S3 on Ceph. Other alternatives include DNS round-robin and HAproxy. A virtual interface is created that handles the requests to real servers.
Setting up QuantaStor with Scale-out S3 Object Storage
This article focuses on setting up Kemp LoadMaster to balance S3 object storage client connections across a cluster of QuantaStor systems. Before setting up Kemp, you’ll first need to set up a QuantaStor storage grid with at least 3x systems. QuantaStor Community Edition licenses are free, fully-featured, and support up to 160TB so you can set up your grid by getting the ISO image and license keys here.
QuantaStor can be deployed as VMs if you don’t have hardware available and there’s a video that will walk you through the setup and configuration process. Once you’ve got your QuantaStor S3 storage set up you’ll be ready for these next configuration steps.
Installation / Setup on QuantaStor
Step 1) Kemp is available as an OVA so that you can get started by just booting it as a VM or even as a container. Once started you’ll be able to log in to Kemp LoadMaster via its web-based management interface which is where we will start.
Step 2) Click ‘Virtual Services’ and ‘Add New’.
Step 3) Specify parameters for the virtual service, and click ‘Add this Virtual Service’.
Step 4) You’ll then be shown the virtual service. Expand out the sections to see them all.
- Standard Options – These options are specific to the virtual service. The ‘Scheduling Method’ can be changed to decide how the LoadMaster handles requests
- SSL Properties – SSL can be enabled so that LoadMaster handles it, but you will be required to supply a certificate that matches the services provided
- Advanced Properties – These options are also specific to the virtual service
- ESP Options – ESP is the ‘Edge Security Pack’ from Kemp
- Real Servers – These are real servers that LoadMaster uses to handle requests. The virtual service requires real servers to function correctly
Step 5) Change ‘Scheduling Method’ to ‘least connection’ and click ‘Add New’ in ‘Real Servers’.
Step 6) Specify details for real servers and click ‘Add This Real Server’. Repeat until all servers are added. Click ‘Back’ when done. You’ll then see them appear in the ‘Real Servers’ section.
Step 7) Check the virtual service is configured correctly by clicking ‘View/Modify Services’. If things are all green, then the service should be working. You should then be able to connect to the virtual service.
For more information on QuantaStor, visit osnexus.com.
Categories: Storage Appliance Hardware
www | grep storage 
Is this just a simple case of load balancing QuantaStore on port 443 with round robin?
Its a bit hard to see from the screen shots.
Would it not be better with some extended health checks, or distributing the load based on the performance of the storage nodes?
I know Kemp has done a lot of work with Dell ECS on more granular methods..
https://kemptechnologies.com/ecs-connection-manager
I work for Loadbalancer.org , and we work closely with several other object storage vendors, so just shout if you wanted to setup a lab for more detailed testing and documentation with our Loadbalancer Enterprise ADC:
https://www.loadbalancer.org/sectors/storage/
Thanks again for the blog.
I think in this case we’re showing Kemp as a load balancer for object storage which effectively does round-robin on port 7480 (default port for CephRGW). But yes it could also be used to round-robin across nodes in the grid for other ports like 443 for the web management interface. Am interested in doing some testing with you for Loadbalancer Enterprise ADC verification, thanks for the offer Malcom.