Load Balancing Servers, Firewalls, and Caches First Edition

Superb introductory book related to Application delivery controller methodologies.Although, this book won't deal with details involved in protocols like(TCP/UDP/IP/HTTP/FTP to name few) but provides a clean overview which helps reader to understand the functionality behind LB.Chandra,I am expecting version 2.0 to this book covering advancements in general and L7 details in particular.Strongly recommend for readers who would like to know basics behind Server Load Balancing,Global Server Load Balancing,Firewall and Cache load balancing.

Although the book was published a few years ago, the information is quite useful, and if you can find a used copy so much the better.

One of the best load balancing book for understanding the underlying concepts. Very well explained. I strongly recommend it to be read by people of want to learn about Load balancer logic from scratch. The concepts are well explained from level 0 & goes up higher. In short a mandatory keepsake book on Load Balancing.

It's ok. Maybe it was me misreading the title, but I was looking for something on load balancers regardless of platform. I just ended up putting it down as a few chapters and jumping around a bit after realizing it's not what I wanted.

Still completely relevant in 2017.

The author explains vendor independent concepts of load balancers and discusses their (dis)advantages.He is dividing them into four major applications:* Server Load Balancing (63p)* Global Server Load Balancing (19p)* Firewall Load Balancing and (15p)* Transparent cache Switching (8p)additions:* application examples (4p)* future outlook (2p)What makes the book so enjoyable to read is the authors love to the details. The story just flows very smooth.Especially the thorough explanation, screenshots and technical details deserve the mark "distinction" (Very good). While I read the book it was like puzzle peaces suddenly falling all together to show me the bigger picture.I did like the follow up of technical issues like session persistency (server affinity), URL switching, system design vs. functionality considerations and the limitations that come with the chosen solutions. The described issues are exactly those that system designers will face in real life and it doesnt stop there of course. The book is laying a good groundwork for development of advanced concepts.The part of the book that I enjoyed most was the chapter about firewall solution concepts. As the author points out correctly the traffic flow in both directions must be managed. This is also why the setup from a redundant firewall to a load balanced redundant firewall must justify multiple complex issues.In this case the author went through the analysis of the traffic flow, a stateful vs. stateless discussion, a layer2 vs. layer3 discussion, proxy firewalls, synchronized firewalls, multizone firewalls, VPN load balancing, active-active vs. active-standby discussion and the interaction between routers, load balancers and firewalls. While some topics could only be scratched on the surface the concepts and ideas behind it are explained very clear.There is no doubt for me that a 2nd edition can easily just pickup where this edition left off. The author clearly shows that there are more scenarios to be discovered and discussed.On the one side I would love to see a updated 2nd edition from the same author, on the other side I guess it's been held back to keep the competitions products in a distance ;-)Also the book was published 6+ years ago I felt that the concepts did not loose any of its value. Which leads me to the point that this must have been " THE Technical Book of the Year 2002"This book still receives well deserved full marks.Bravo !!

The book is very clear and helpful with details and pictures.If you wnat to understand more on Load Balancing I think the book is the right pick (at least intermediate users).Maybe more examples of different brands of load balancers (Cisco, F5 etc.) would have been appreciated.Overall I liked it very much.

This book is a very well written and nicely organised introduction to server load balancing. The author describes the basics of load balancing, including NAT, session persistence, and network architectures. A discussion on application-layer parsing was quite good. There is also a chapter on global server load balancing (including incorporating load-balancing into the authoritative DNS server) which I found to be very detailed and interesting.Much of the book is centered on how to load balance TCP (and to a lesser extent UDP), and the author uses HTTP and FTP as his primary driving examples. Throughout the book, the author provides some insight regarding what approaches real companies use (e.g. "this method is what Foundry and Cisco uses."), which I liked very much. Also, the illustrations were plentiful (although a bit primitive-looking).There are only a few negatives about this book. The english writing is a bit stilted at times, and the chapters on firewalls and caches were basically rehashes of earlier chapters. Finally, I was hoping the author would have provided more detail on the load-distribution heuristics (which server to choose) with more metrics and actual real-world results.I found the book to be extremely well organised. You will not get lost while reading this book, but you will need a university-level understanding of TCP/IP (and probably the link layer as well to get the NAT material) and networks in general to fully appreciate the matieral. Overall, a great book.