[lvs-users] Persistence, Failover, and a PFSense Router.

[Matthew Smart]

Hey guys,
I know that this is a question that will need to be directed to the 
PFSense router team but I was hoping I could get some information on the 
issue from you guys first to help narrow down the cause. So here goes.

I have a basic LVS-DR balancing ports 80 and 443 between two real 
servers using weighted round robin with persistence engaged. In the 
event of a real server crash ipvsadm shows that the failed server's 
weight is now 0 and if I hit the the VIP from my LAN my request is 
routed to the remaining server without issue.

The problem arises when I perform a failover test using the WAN IP that 
I have routing to the VIP using NAT. In this case, the request is still 
trying to be routed to the crashed server. I came across this patch that 
addressed the issue in LVS itself. 
http://www.austintek.com/LVS/LVS-HOWTO/HOWTO/LVS-HOWTO.persistent_connection.html#new_persistence

What I am wondering is if you can give me some idea for how that patch 
fixed the issue so I can convey the information to PFSense and see if 
they have a mechanism I can trigger manually to achieve the same effect?

Thanks for any info you can provide,

-- 
Matthew Smart
President
Smart Software Solutions Inc.
108 S Pierre St.
Pierre, SD 57501

Phone: (605) 280-0383
Skype: msmart13
Email:msmart at smartsoftwareinc.com