HP VPN Firewall Appliances High Availability Configuration Guide

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Configuring load balancing
Feature and hardware compatibility
Hardware Load balancin
g
com
p
atibilit
y
F1000-A-EI/F1000-S-EI Supports only outbound link load balancing
F1000-E Supports only server/firewall load balancing
F5000
Supports server/firewall load balancing and
inbound/outbound link load balancing
F5000-S/F5000-C Supports only server/firewall load balancing
VPN firewall modules Supports only server/firewall load balancing
20-Gbps VPN firewall modules Supports only server/firewall load balancing
Overview
Load balancing (referred to as LB hereinafter) is a cluster technology to distribute specific services such as
network services and network traffic among multiple network devices (for example servers and firewalls)
or multiple links, enhancing service processing capability and ensuring high availability of services.
LB delivers the following advantages:
• High performance—LB distributes services to multiple network devices or links, enhancing the
performance of the whole system.
• Scalability—LB facilitates the addition of network devices or links in a cluster, meeting the
ever-increasing service requirements for servers without decreasing service quality.
• Reliability—Failure of a single or multiple devices or links will not result in service interruption,
enhancing the reliability of the entire system.
• Manageability—Administration is performed only on LB-enabled devices, and devices or links
need only common configuration and maintenance.
• Transparency—A cluster is like a device or link with high availability and performance, and users
are not aware of and do not care the specific network structure. In addition, increasing or
decreasing devices or links will not affect normal services.
LB typically includes the following types:
• Server load balancing—Data centers generally adopt server load balancing for networking.
Network services are distributed to multiple servers to enhance service processing capabilities of
the data centers.
• Firewall load balancing—In networks where firewall processing capabilities have become the
bottleneck, firewall load balancing can be adopted to balance the network traffic among multiple
firewalls to enhance the processing capabilities of firewalls.
• Link load balancing—Link load balancing applies to a network environment where there are
multiple carrier interfaces to implement dynamic selection of links, enhancing the service reliability.