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Load balancer
Description and cases
The SSG can act as a traffic balancer based on IP addresses belonging to an AS defined as local
in asnum.dscp
.
In this case, the SSG-LB acts as an L2-bridge in the network, hence the name L2 traffic balancer.
Case: Balancer on a traffic mirror
Suppose a 400Gbps traffic mirror needs to be evenly distributed among four VAS platforms (Value-Added Services) performing traffic analysis and various detection.
In this case, SSG-LB will evenly distribute traffic with equal port utilization on the pullers and maintain traffic symmetry (traffic from one session will be directed to only one puller).
Example configuration /etc/dpi/fastdpi.conf:
- Traffic mirroring is fed into 4x100G interfaces.
- Traffic is balanced between four pullers, each puller is connected by 4x25G links.
in_dev=05-00.0:05-00.1:05-00.2:05-00.3 out_dev=01-00.0:01-00.1:01-00.2:01-00.3:02-00.0:02-00.1:02-00.2:02-00.3:03-00.0:03-00.1:03-00.2:03-00.3:04-00.0:04-00.1:04-00.2:04-00.3 #FastDPI Control ctrl_port=29000 ctrl_dev=lo #Turn on Load Balancing enable_l2_lb=1 #Balance algorithm maglev=2 #Hash table lb_hash_out_dev_type=1
Setting
Setting up subnets for balancing
Balancing applies only to IP addresses belonging to the AS defined as local
in asnum.dscp
.
- Define an autonomous system with IP addresses that are used by subscribers:
vi aslocal.txt 10.0.0.0/8 64511 172.16.0.0/12 64511 192.168.0.0/16 64511 cat aslocal.txt | as2bin /etc/dpi/aslocal.bin
- Mark a given autonomous system as local:
vi my_as_dscp.txt 64511 local 10415 local cat my_as_dscp.txt | as2dscp /etc/dpi/asnum.dscp
You can use either a custom AS or a public AS as the AS.
Read more at the link - A reload must be performed to apply the parameters:
service fastdpi reload
Setting /etc/dpi/fastdpi.conf
- Define the input and output interfaces in the configuration file.
The input interfaces to which the traffic mirror is fed are specified in thein_dev
parameter, and the output interfaces are specified inout_dev
.
Interfaces do not form pairs and species constructs are allowed:in_dev=05-00.0:05-00.1:05-00.2:05-00.3:0b-00.0:0b-00.1:0b-00.2:0b-00.3 out_dev=08-00.0:08-00.1:08-00.2:08-00.3
Or
in_dev=05-00.0 out_dev=out_dev=08-00.0:08-00.1:08-00.2:08-00.3
- Enable balancing mode in the
enable_l2_lb
parameter, where:0
— deactivate balancing;1
— activate balancing.
- Determine by what value to initialize the hash table in the
lb_hash_out_dev_type
parameter, where:0
— use the internal index of the output interface;1
— use the interface name from [in|out]_dev.
- Select an engine to handle thread dispatchers in the
dpdk_engine
parameter, where:0
— read/write default engine, one dispatcher for everything;1
— read/write engine with two dispatcher threads: a dispatcher for each direction;2
— Read/write engine with RSS support: for each direction,dpdk_rss
dispatchers are created (defaultdpdk_rss=2
), so total number of dispatchers = 2 *dpdk_rss
.
Learn more about thedpdk_engine
parameter by clicking here.
- Select a balancing algorithm. The
maglev
algorithm with fixed hash table size is used for traffic balancing, where:1
— if src and dst ip are both local, then hash is calculated based on these two addresses;2
— if only src ip local, then hash is calculated based on src ip;3
— if only dst ip local, hash is calculated on the basis of dst ip;4
— hash is calculated based on src and dst ip.
Based on the calculated hash value, the output interface is determined by determining the index of the hash table cell containing the interface index from the array of output interfaces.
SSG-LB equipment requirements
Max IN traffic Gbps (Mirror on SSG-LB) | Max OUT traffic Gbps (Balanced traffic to the removers) | SSG-LB version | Number of cores of 2.5 GHz or more | RAM GB | Type and minimum number of ports | Packet per second in millions at a base CPU frequency of 2.5GHz or more |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
up to 100 | up to 100 | SSG-100-LB | 28 Intel 6258R, Intel 5320, 32 AMD 7502P | 64 (8x8GB) | 2x100G + 14x10/25G | 40M pps |
up to 200 | up to 200 | SSG-200-LB | 64 AMD 9534 | 64 (8x8GB) | 9x25/40/50/100G | 60M pps |
up to 300 | up to 300 | SSG-300-LB | 96 AMD 9654 | 64 (8x8GB) | 9x25/40/50/100G | 80M pps |
up to 400 | up to 400 | SSG-400-LB | 128 AMD 9754 | 64 (8x8GB) | 9x25/40/50/100G | 120M pps |
up to 800 | up to 800 | SSG-800-LB | 2x128 AMD 9754 | 128 (16x8GB) | 9x25/40/50/100G | 240M pps |