Applescripting Load Balance records

Re: Re: Applescripting Load Balance records

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>Maybe I should be approaching the whole thing differently. Basically, I want
>2 machines to share the load for a number of domains, so if one goes down the
>failure is transparent. I thought load balance = round robin. Am I wrong?

What you want is load balancing and fault tolerance, which can be
accomplished with a load balance record (as you were attempting to
do). Round robin load sharing is more primitive, and doesn't offer
fault tolerance.

>>Again, I'm not surprised. If you look at the definition of a Load
>>Balance record in the scripting dictionary, not all of the fields are
>>present. So it was never really intended to be scripted at all.
>
>Future feature request - full scriptability.

Noted. I had thought we pretty much had that - I'd never looked at
the deficiencies of the load balance record object.

>>I believe you've stumbled across a small collection of bugs. Why are
>>you trying to script the creation of load balance records? Could you
>>not accomplish the same thing with a single load balance record in
>>your primary domain and CNAME (alias) records in your other domains?
>
>I hadn't tried that. Will this work prpoerly with multiple virtual hosts in
>WebSTAR? I thought the alias record ultimately resolved to the same virtual
>host.

DNS records and WebSTAR virtual hosts don't directly relate. It's
true that when a browser looks up a name that's defined as an alias,
it then has to look up the address of the canonical name [description
simplified for clarity]; nevertheless, it sends to the server the
name that was originally typed in, and the server uses that name for
virtual hosting purposes.

Using only one load balance record cuts down on bookkeeping tasks
required of QuickDNS, and it also (potentially) cuts down the amount
of LPM (Load Preference Message) traffic on your network.

Unfortunately, StarNine's latest load balancer plug-in isn't
configurable separately for each virtual host, so changes to the DNS
won't stop it from sending LPM packets for every entry in the virtual
hosts table. However, you can use the original WebSTAR QuickDNS
Responder (part of the QuickDNS distribution) instead, which only
sends LPM packets for _one_ host, and allows you to configure the
name used in these messages. Useful if you only have one load balance
record.
____________________________________________________________________
Chris Buxton cbuxton@menandmice.com
Men & Mice http://www.menandmice.com
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