Tag: loadbalancer.org

SSL Termination & The BEAST

Over the last few weeks we have seen more and more users reporting that they have run a security check on the SSL certificate thats installed on their Loadbalancer appliance using the Trustworty Internet Movement web site (https://www.trustworthyinternet.org/ssl-pulse/). The idea behind the site is basically to test as many SSL certificates on the Internet as

Upstart Script for Collectd

We have been doing some internal testing with Collectd. “collectd gathers statistics about the system it is running on and stores this information. Those statistics can then be used to find current performance bottlenecks (i.e. performance analysis) and predict future system load (i.e. capacity planning).

For any poor sod who needs to deal with the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)

Any engineer dealing with PCI DSS compliance issues probably looses a little bit of the joy in life . Now don’t get me wrong, The PCI DSS has a laudable aim and is written quite well and mostly sensibly but like the bible is open to a vast amount of interpretation… So lets start with the fundemental

Load balancing Microsoft Print Server

Microsoft print server provides a great way to share printers throughout your organisation, but when the print server service falls over, the phone quickly starts to ring. By adding a load balancer and a second print server configured with the same print queues , you’ll quickly have a load balanced and resillient printing infrastructure for

NTLM Authenticating Proxy Check Script

We do quite a bit of work with web proxy vendors, loadbalancing multiple web filters/proxies with one of our appliances and our customers have requested a way of health checking through the proxy when they have NTLM authentication enabled. Always happy to help where we can I have created a script that will retrieve a

Apache and X-Forwarded-For Headers

As a follow on to my previous blog, its easier to get Apache to log client IP addresses utilizing X-Forwarded-For headers than it is using IIS. By default, the logs do not record source IP addresses for clients but this is very easy to change using the LogFormat directive in the httpd.conf file as explained

GSLB – Why do Global Server Load Balancers Suck?

OK, Before the flames start let me state the usual caveat, “GSLBs don’t ALWAYS suck, just most of the time”. Here at Loadbalancer.org we have toyed with the idea of selling a GSLB (as most of our competitors do), it wouldn’t take long… to hack a decent PowerDNS interface onto one of our appliances… But every

G-Zip Compression and Loadbalancing

A couple of our customers have asked if our appliances would do G-Zip compression in the past we haven’t given it much thought. Then out of the blue a company offered us a card to test with http://www.aha.com/ and some of us in the office welcoming the opportunity to meddle with anything new jumped at