So ldirectord is kind of a front-end for ipvsadm. The tools allow you to set up load-balancing between internal servers. I run each service in a VM, and I have at least two copies of each (on separate physical servers). Ldirectord lets me configure how frequently to verify each machine is up, a list of primary servers, and an optional backup when the others go down. Overall it works pretty smooth.

Shorewall is similarly a front end for iptables, allowing a more structured set of configuration files. I’ve been trying to start using Webmin for the first time because it has some nice management of shorewall, maybe I’ll be able to clean up some of my config, but I’d also like to get traffic shaping configured.

I have a dedicated firewall (just moved to a poweredge R620 last night), a NAS, and two VM systems to run services on… all run from home. I enjoy setting things up to play with, so this has all been built up starting from old desktop machines and expanded over time.

I tried playing around with opensense awhile back. Wasn’t impressed and kept running into things I couldn’t get it to do for me, so I stuck with my existing setup. I use ldirectord for load balancing between servers and shorewall lets me generally balance the traffic between WAN connections. It works pretty well but there’s a lot of moving parts.

Does anyone else use a Linux firewall to manage dual connections? I run Shorewall here, but I haven’t really had much luck with traffic shaping to keep the majority of traffic on my primary connection while allowing low-speed info like email to split up between connections.