Windows/.NET Load Distribution & Balancing

Question

Hi all,

Is there a vetted Windows-friendly, or even .NET-native, load-distributing/load-balancing utility out there along the lines of HA Proxy? We have a .NET stack product, and the one piece that we step out of the stack is for load-balancing.

We need something with configurable rules for distribution -- perhaps subdomain-driven -- that NLB alone doesn't seem to offer. If it integrates directly with .NET, or offers an exposed API callable by webservices, so much the better!

Thanks in advance!

Clarification: we need to logically part over boxes. This is not just a cluster/failover/replication scenario.

Further clarification: we are a WCF house. We already have a custom router and inspectors on our grid. We need distribution on the frontend however, which is where HA Proxy currently lives in our architecture. However, we need something we don't have to write then test the heck out of, as we're about to wrap a release and no one has cycles to test something up to the level of an HA Proxy.

Candidate solution: I was previously unaware of IIS7+ Application Request Routing (ARR) which uses the URLRewrite module. I'm not familiar with anyone who can speak to ARR's performance and stability, perhaps a Stacker can help me out?

Answer 1

With .NET 4.0 we get the WCF Routing Service which looks to be a software based proxy we get out of the box, which could possibly be used to distribute load. It can do content based routing, protocol mediation (tcp/ip->http or https->http) and is likely extensible in some fashion.

Some resources to get started:

• WCF Routing Service in .NET 4.0 channel 9 video.
• .NET 4.0 Training Kit for some .NET 4.0 samples

You can always start rolling your own using these articles by Bustamante:

• Building a WCF Router, Part 1
• Building a WCF Router, Part 2

HTH,

Z