Brocade Communications Systems ServerIron ADX 12.4.00 Service Manual download pdf (Page 184)

ServerIron ADX Firewall Load Balancing Guide 173

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Configuring weighted load balancing

DRAFT: BROCADE CONFIDENTIAL

Configure each entry in the ACL to permit the addresses for which you want to override the global

hash mask.

Configuring weighted load balancing

You can assign weights to your firewalls to bias the load balancing in favor of certain firewalls.

Weight

The weight you assign to a firewall determines the percentage of the current connections that are

given to that firewall. For example, in a configuration with five firewalls of various weights, the

percentage of connections is calculated as follows:

• Weight fwall1 = 7

• Weight fwall2 = 8

• Weight fwall3 = 2

• Weight fwall4 = 2

• Weight fwall5 = 5

The total weight of all the firewalls is 24

The result is that fwall1 gets 7/24 of the current number of connections, fwall2 gets 8/24, server3

gets 2/24, and so on. If a new firewall, fwall6, is added with a weight of 10, the new firewall gets

10/34.

If you set the weight so that your fastest firewall gets 50 percent of the connections, it will get 50

percent of the connections at a given time. Because the firewall is faster than others, it can

complete more than 50 percent of the total connections overall because it services the

connections at a higher rate. Thus, the weight is not a fixed ratio but adjusts to firewall capacity

over time.

The default weight for firewalls is 1.

Assigning weights to firewalls

To assign weights to firewalls, enter the following commands.

ServerIronADX(config)# server fw-name fw1

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw1)# weight 7

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw1)# server fw-name fw2

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw2)# weight 8

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw2)# server fw-name fw3

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw3)# weight 2

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw3)# server fw-name fw4

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw4)# weight 2

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw4)# server fw-name fw5

ServerIronADX(config-rs-fw5)# weight 5

These commands assign weights to five firewalls. The ServerIron will load balance new connections

to the firewalls based on their relative weights.

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Brocade Communications Systems ServerIron ADX 12.4.00 Service Manual Page 184