cisco router 3600 arp setting up unicast ip to multicast macs

[iwandav]

Please can someone help me, we are attempting to load balance our terminal serivces server with a spedo with the following config:
2 server server A and B
Server A has an Ip address of 172.20.210.1 load balance is enabled using 172.20.210.3 as speudo address
Server B has an Ip address of 172.20.210.2 with speudo address also atached as above

I beleive there is a problem with cisco routers being able to handle this speudo address against the two mac address created during the load balancing procedure.

We have therefore been attempting to add a static arp address for one Ip address against two mac address but are failing, can someone please tell us how to do it.

My head hurts

Thank You

 

[oj88]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the server(s) should provide a virtual mac-address in addition to the virtual IP address.

This way, the correct IP to MAC address ARP entry will be generated on the router.

Just a thought. Orlando Palomar Jr
CCIE# 11206, CCNP
CIPT Operations Specialist
Phil-Data Business Systems, Inc.

 

[iwandav]

Thank you for replying you are correct in saying that the servers do provide a virtual mac-address agains our virtual ip address server side, but when we come to access the server via ts clientwe have dificilties load balancing. We have tried to add multiple arp entries on our cisco router but only one mac address appears in the list against our virtual ip address we need to add another but are unsure how to do this.

 

[oj88]

If you point your clients to the virtual IP address, load balancing should occur. Don't use the "real" IP address of the servers on your clients.

It's like this; The servers will provide a virtual IP and MAC address that they both know about. Once traffic arrives from any of the clients destined for the virtual IP/MAC address, the group of servers participating in this load-balancing scheme would run a sort of an algorithm that would decide for themselves which one of the servers would process the request. Orlando Palomar Jr
CCIE# 11206, CCNP
CIPT Operations Specialist
Phil-Data Business Systems, Inc.

 

[iwandav]

We are pointing the clients to the virtual address but I have read various articles which state that cisco routers are unable to handle the request as there are 2 mac addresses asigned to that IP..only one of our servers responds, the one that gets put in the arp table first.

 

[oj88]

That's weird. The virtual IP address should be mapped to the virtual mac address in the arp table, not to the real mac addresses of either servers.

Though, you should also see the arp entry of both of the servers' real IP and mac addresses. Orlando Palomar Jr
CCIE# 11206, CCNP
CIPT Operations Specialist
Phil-Data Business Systems, Inc.