Load Sharing

[mkalien]

We want to take a couple OS X Server file servers and do load sharing on them. The idea is to attach them both to the same XSan and use DNS entries to pass requests off to either of the two ip addresses. The other idea was to try and use Cisco equipment which would give us actual load balancing rather than just sharing.

In the first scenario the servers have their own IP address but share a DNS name, meaning there are two a records for fileserver.university.edu.

In the second scenario there are 3 IP addresses and 3 names. The actual server IP addresses would have their own DNS record (fs1.university.edu and fs2.university.edu). The third IP address, the Virtual IP (vip), would also have a DNS record (this would be the fileserver.university.edu record).

Are there any issues here that I need to worry/think about? Apple servers seem pretty picky about DNS configuration. Would the proposed DNS config scenarios cause problems? What about if these weren’t just straight file servers, but were hosting home folders (there would have to be an entry in OD for fileserver.university.edu)?

[mkalien]

Right…kerberos! grrr…

OK, so if both fs1 and fs2 are connected to a Directory and I join them to the Kerberos REALM, they will have principals like afp/fs1.university.edu@MYREALM or SMB/fs2.university.edu@MYREALM right? That means a client asking for afp/fileserver.university.edu@MYREALM won’t match a principal and thus revert to using standard authentication methods?

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