NAME
ipvsadm - Linux Virtual Server administration
SYNOPSIS
ipvsadm -A|E -t|u|f service-address [-s scheduler]
[-p [timeout]] [-M netmask]
ipvsadm -D -t|u|f service-address
ipvsadm -C
ipvsadm -R
ipvsadm -S [-n]
ipvsadm -a|e -t|u|f service-address -r server-address
[-g|i|m] [-w weight] [-x upper] [-y lower]
ipvsadm -d -t|u|f service-address -r server-address
ipvsadm -L|l [options]
ipvsadm -Z [-t|u|f service-address]
ipvsadm --set tcp tcpfin udp
ipvsadm --start-daemon state [--mcast-interface interface]
[--syncid syncid]
ipvsadm --stop-daemon state
ipvsadm -h
DESCRIPTION
Ipvsadm(8) is used to set up, maintain or inspect the virtual server
table in the Linux kernel. The Linux Virtual Server can be used to
build scalable network services based on a cluster of two or more
nodes. The active node of the cluster redirects service requests to a
collection of server hosts that will actually perform the services.
Supported features include two protocols (TCP and UDP), three packet-
forwarding methods (NAT, tunneling, and direct routing), and eight load
balancing algorithms (round robin, weighted round robin, least-
connection, weighted least-connection, locality-based least-connection,
locality-based least-connection with replication, destination-hashing,
and source-hashing).
The command has two basic formats for execution:
ipvsadm COMMAND [protocol] service-address
[scheduling-method] [persistence options]
ipvsadm command [protocol] service-address
server-address [packet-forwarding-method]
[weight options]
The first format manipulates a virtual service and the algorithm for
assigning service requests to real servers. Optionally, a persistent
timeout and network mask for the granularity of a persistent service
may be specified. The second format manipulates a real server that is
associated with an existing virtual service. When specifying a real
server, the packet-forwarding method and the weight of the real server,
relative to other real servers for the virtual service, may be
specified, otherwise defaults will be used.
COMMANDS
ipvsadm(8) recognises the commands described below. Upper-case commands
maintain virtual services. Lower-case commands maintain real servers
that are associated with a virtual service.
-A, --add-service
Add a virtual service. A service address is uniquely defined by
a triplet: IP address, port number, and protocol. Alternatively,
a virtual service may be defined by a firewall-mark.
-E, --edit-service
Edit a virtual service.
-D, --delete-service
Delete a virtual service, along with any associated real
servers.
-C, --clear
Clear the virtual server table.
-R, --restore
Restore Linux Virtual Server rules from stdin. Each line read
from stdin will be treated as the command line options to a
separate invocation of ipvsadm. Lines read from stdin can
optionally begin with "ipvsadm". This option is useful to avoid
executing a large number or ipvsadm commands when constructing
an extensive routing table.
-S, --save
Dump the Linux Virtual Server rules to stdout in a format that
can be read by -R|--restore.
-a, --add-server
Add a real server to a virtual service.
-e, --edit-server
Edit a real server in a virtual service.
-d, --delete-server
Remove a real server from a virtual service.
-L, -l, --list
List the virtual server table if no argument is specified. If a
service-address is selected, list this service only. If the -c
option is selected, then display the connection table. The exact
output is affected by the other arguments given.
-Z, --zero
Zero the packet, byte and rate counters in a service or all
services.
--set tcp tcpfin udp
Change the timeout values used for IPVS connections. This
command always takes 3 parameters, representing the timeout
values (in seconds) for TCP sessions, TCP sessions after
receiving a FIN packet, and UDP packets, respectively. A
timeout value 0 means that the current timeout value of the
corresponding entry is preserved.
--start-daemon state
Start the connection synchronization daemon. The state is to
indicate that the daemon is started as master or backup. The
connection synchronization daemon is implemented inside the
Linux kernel. The master daemon running at the primary load
balancer multicasts changes of connections periodically, and the
backup daemon running at the backup load balancers receives
multicast message and creates corresponding connections. Then,
in case the primary load balancer fails, a backup load balancer
will takeover, and it has state of almost all connections, so
that almost all established connections can continue to access
the service.
The sync daemon currently only supports IPv4 connections.
--stop-daemon
Stop the connection synchronization daemon.
-h, --help
Display a description of the command syntax.
PARAMETERS
The commands above accept or require zero or more of the following
parameters.
-t, --tcp-service service-address
Use TCP service. The service-address is of the form host[:port].
Host may be one of a plain IP address or a hostname. Port may be
either a plain port number or the service name of port. The Port
may be omitted, in which case zero will be used. A Port of zero
is only valid if the service is persistent as the
-p|--persistent option, in which case it is a wild-card port,
that is connections will be accepted to any port.
-u, --udp-service service-address
Use UDP service. See the -t|--tcp-service for the description of
the service-address.
-f, --fwmark-service integer
Use a firewall-mark, an integer value greater than zero, to
denote a virtual service instead of an address, port and
protocol (UDP or TCP). The marking of packets with a firewall-
mark is configured using the -m|--mark option to iptables(8). It
can be used to build a virtual service assoicated with the same
real servers, covering multiple IP address, port and protocol
tripplets. If IPv6 addresses are used, the -6 option must be
used.
Using firewall-mark virtual services provides a convenient
method of grouping together different IP addresses, ports and
protocols into a single virtual service. This is useful for both
simplifying configuration if a large number of virtual services
are required and grouping persistence across what would
otherwise be multiple virtual services.
-s, --scheduler scheduling-method
scheduling-method Algorithm for allocating TCP connections and
UDP datagrams to real servers. Scheduling algorithms are
implemented as kernel modules. Ten are shipped with the Linux
Virtual Server:
rr - Robin Robin: distributes jobs equally amongst the available
real servers.
wrr - Weighted Round Robin: assigns jobs to real servers
proportionally to there real servers’ weight. Servers with
higher weights receive new jobs first and get more jobs than
servers with lower weights. Servers with equal weights get an
equal distribution of new jobs.
lc - Least-Connection: assigns more jobs to real servers with
fewer active jobs.
wlc - Weighted Least-Connection: assigns more jobs to servers
with fewer jobs and relative to the real servers’ weight
(Ci/Wi). This is the default.
lblc - Locality-Based Least-Connection: assigns jobs destined
for the same IP address to the same server if the server is not
overloaded and available; otherwise assign jobs to servers with
fewer jobs, and keep it for future assignment.
lblcr - Locality-Based Least-Connection with Replication:
assigns jobs destined for the same IP address to the least-
connection node in the server set for the IP address. If all the
node in the server set are over loaded, it picks up a node with
fewer jobs in the cluster and adds it in the sever set for the
target. If the server set has not been modified for the
specified time, the most loaded node is removed from the server
set, in order to avoid high degree of replication.
dh - Destination Hashing: assigns jobs to servers through
looking up a statically assigned hash table by their destination
IP addresses.
sh - Source Hashing: assigns jobs to servers through looking up
a statically assigned hash table by their source IP addresses.
sed - Shortest Expected Delay: assigns an incoming job to the
server with the shortest expected delay. The expected delay that
the job will experience is (Ci + 1) / Ui if sent to the ith
server, in which Ci is the number of jobs on the the ith server
and Ui is the fixed service rate (weight) of the ith server.
nq - Never Queue: assigns an incoming job to an idle server if
there is, instead of waiting for a fast one; if all the servers
are busy, it adopts the Shortest Expected Delay policy to assign
the job.
-p, --persistent [timeout]
Specify that a virtual service is persistent. If this option is
specified, multiple requests from a client are redirected to the
same real server selected for the first request. Optionally,
the timeout of persistent sessions may be specified given in
seconds, otherwise the default of 300 seconds will be used. This
option may be used in conjunction with protocols such as SSL or
FTP where it is important that clients consistently connect with
the same real server.
Note: If a virtual service is to handle FTP connections then
persistence must be set for the virtual service if Direct
Routing or Tunnelling is used as the forwarding mechanism. If
Masquerading is used in conjunction with an FTP service than
persistence is not necessary, but the ip_vs_ftp kernel module
must be used. This module may be manually inserted into the
kernel using insmod(8).
-M, --netmask netmask
Specify the granularity with which clients are grouped for
persistent virtual services. The source address of the request
is masked with this netmask to direct all clients from a network
to the same real server. The default is 255.255.255.255, that
is, the persistence granularity is per client host. Less
specific netmasks may be used to resolve problems with non-
persistent cache clusters on the client side. IPv6 netmasks
should be specified as a prefix length between 1 and 128. The
default prefix length is 128.
-r, --real-server server-address
Real server that an associated request for service may be
assigned to. The server-address is the host address of a real
server, and may plus port. Host can be either a plain IP address
or a hostname. Port can be either a plain port number or the
service name of port. In the case of the masquerading method,
the host address is usually an RFC 1918 private IP address, and
the port can be different from that of the associated service.
With the tunneling and direct routing methods, port must be
equal to that of the service address. For normal services, the
port specified in the service address will be used if port is
not specified. For fwmark services, port may be omitted, in
which case the destination port on the real server will be the
destination port of the request sent to the virtual service.
[packet-forwarding-method]
-g, --gatewaying Use gatewaying (direct routing). This is the
default.
-i, --ipip Use ipip encapsulation (tunneling).
-m, --masquerading Use masquerading (network access
translation, or NAT).
Note: Regardless of the packet-forwarding mechanism specified,
real servers for addresses for which there are interfaces on the
local node will be use the local forwarding method, then packets
for the servers will be passed to upper layer on the local node.
This cannot be specified by ipvsadm, rather it set by the kernel
as real servers are added or modified.
-w, --weight weight
Weight is an integer specifying the capacity of a server
relative to the others in the pool. The valid values of weight
are 0 through to 65535. The default is 1. Quiescent servers are
specified with a weight of zero. A quiescent server will receive
no new jobs but still serve the existing jobs, for all
scheduling algorithms distributed with the Linux Virtual Server.
Setting a quiescent server may be useful if the server is
overloaded or needs to be taken out of service for maintenance.
-x, --u-threshold uthreshold
uthreshold is an integer specifying the upper connection
threshold of a server. The valid values of uthreshold are 0
through to 65535. The default is 0, which means the upper
connection threshold is not set. If uthreshold is set with other
values, no new connections will be sent to the server when the
number of its connections exceeds its upper connection
threshold.
-y, --l-threshold lthreshold
lthreshold is an integer specifying the lower connection
threshold of a server. The valid values of lthreshold are 0
through to 65535. The default is 0, which means the lower
connection threshold is not set. If lthreshold is set with other
values, the server will receive new connections when the number
of its connections drops below its lower connection threshold.
If lthreshold is not set but uthreshold is set, the server will
receive new connections when the number of its connections drops
below three forth of its upper connection threshold.
--mcast-interface interface
Specify the multicast interface that the sync master daemon
sends outgoing multicasts through, or the sync backup daemon
listens to for multicasts.
--syncid syncid
Specify the syncid that the sync master daemon fills in the
SyncID header while sending multicast messages, or the sync
backup daemon uses to filter out multicast messages not matched
with the SyncID value. The valid values of syncid are 0 through
to 255. The default is 0, which means no filtering at all.
-c, --connection
Connection output. The list command with this option will list
current IPVS connections.
--timeout
Timeout output. The list command with this option will display
the timeout values (in seconds) for TCP sessions, TCP sessions
after receiving a FIN packet, and UDP packets.
--daemon
Daemon information output. The list command with this option
will display the daemon status and its multicast interface.
--stats
Output of statistics information. The list command with this
option will display the statistics information of services and
their servers.
--rate Output of rate information. The list command with this option
will display the rate information (such as connections/second,
bytes/second and packets/second) of services and their servers.
--thresholds
Output of thresholds information. The list command with this
option will display the upper/lower connection threshold
information of each server in service listing.
--persistent-conn
Output of persistent connection information. The list command
with this option will display the persistent connection counter
information of each server in service listing. The persistent
connection is used to forward the actual connections from the
same client/network to the same server.
--sort Sort the list of virtual services and real servers. The virtual
service entries are sorted in ascending order by <protocol,
address, port>. The real server entries are sorted in ascending
order by <address, port>. (default)
--nosort
Do not sort the list of virtual services and real servers.
-n, --numeric
Numeric output. IP addresses and port numbers will be printed
in numeric format rather than as as host names and services
respectively, which is the default.
--exact
Expand numbers. Display the exact value of the packet and byte
counters, instead of only the rounded number in K’s (multiples
of 1000) M’s (multiples of 1000K) or G’s (multiples of 1000M).
This option is only relevant for the -L command.
-6 Use with -f to signify fwmark rule uses IPv6 addresses.
EXAMPLE 1 - Simple Virtual Service
The following commands configure a Linux Director to distribute
incoming requests addressed to port 80 on 207.175.44.110 equally to
port 80 on five real servers. The forwarding method used in this
example is NAT, with each of the real servers being masqueraded by the
Linux Director.
ipvsadm -A -t 207.175.44.110:80 -s rr
ipvsadm -a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.1:80 -m
ipvsadm -a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.2:80 -m
ipvsadm -a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.3:80 -m
ipvsadm -a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.4:80 -m
ipvsadm -a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.5:80 -m
Alternatively, this could be achieved in a single ipvsadm command.
echo "
-A -t 207.175.44.110:80 -s rr
-a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.1:80 -m
-a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.2:80 -m
-a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.3:80 -m
-a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.4:80 -m
-a -t 207.175.44.110:80 -r 192.168.10.5:80 -m
" | ipvsadm -R
As masquerading is used as the forwarding mechanism in this example,
the default route of the real servers must be set to the linux
director, which will need to be configured to forward and masquerade
packets. This can be achieved using the following commands:
echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
EXAMPLE 2 - Firewall-Mark Virtual Service
The following commands configure a Linux Director to distribute
incoming requests addressed to any port on 207.175.44.110 or
207.175.44.111 equally to the corresponding port on five real servers.
As per the previous example, the forwarding method used in this example
is NAT, with each of the real servers being masqueraded by the Linux
Director.
ipvsadm -A -f 1 -s rr
ipvsadm -a -f 1 -r 192.168.10.1:0 -m
ipvsadm -a -f 1 -r 192.168.10.2:0 -m
ipvsadm -a -f 1 -r 192.168.10.3:0 -m
ipvsadm -a -f 1 -r 192.168.10.4:0 -m
ipvsadm -a -f 1 -r 192.168.10.5:0 -m
As masquerading is used as the forwarding mechanism in this example,
the default route of the real servers must be set to the linux
director, which will need to be configured to forward and masquerade
packets. The real server should also be configured to mark incoming
packets addressed to any port on 207.175.44.110 and 207.175.44.111
with firewall-mark 1. If FTP traffic is to be handled by this virtual
service, then the ip_vs_ftp kernel module needs to be inserted into the
kernel. These operations can be achieved using the following commands:
echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
modprobe ip_tables
iptables -A PREROUTING -t mangle -d 207.175.44.110/31 -j MARK --set-mark 1
modprobe ip_vs_ftp
IPv6
IPv6 addresses should be surrounded by square brackets ([ and ]).
ipvsadm -A -t [2001:db8::80]:80 -s rr
ipvsadm -a -t [2001:db8::80]:80 -r [2001:db8::a0a0]:80 -m
fwmark IPv6 services require the -6 option.
NOTES
The Linux Virtual Server implements three defense strategies against
some types of denial of service (DoS) attacks. The Linux Director
creates an entry for each connection in order to keep its state, and
each entry occupies 128 bytes effective memory. LVS’s vulnerability to
a DoS attack lies in the potential to increase the number entries as
much as possible until the linux director runs out of memory. The three
defense strategies against the attack are: Randomly drop some entries
in the table. Drop 1/rate packets before forwarding them. And use
secure tcp state transition table and short timeouts. The strategies
are controlled by sysctl variables and corresponding entries in the
/proc filesystem:
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/drop_entry /proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/drop_packet
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/secure_tcp
Valid values for each variable are 0 through to 3. The default value is
0, which disables the respective defense strategy. 1 and 2 are
automatic modes - when there is no enough available memory, the
respective strategy will be enabled and the variable is automatically
set to 2, otherwise the strategy is disabled and the variable is set to
1. A value of 3 denotes that the respective strategy is always enabled.
The available memory threshold and secure TCP timeouts can be tuned
using the sysctl variables and corresponding entries in the /proc
filesystem:
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/amemthresh /proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_*
FILES
/proc/net/ip_vs
/proc/net/ip_vs_app
/proc/net/ip_vs_conn
/proc/net/ip_vs_stats
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/am_droprate
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/amemthresh
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/drop_entry
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/drop_packet
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/secure_tcp
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_close
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_closewait
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_established
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_finwait
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_icmp
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_lastack
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_listen
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_synack
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_synrecv
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_synsent
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_timewait
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs/timeout_udp
SEE ALSO
The LVS web site (http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/) for more
documentation about LVS.
ipvsadm-save(8), ipvsadm-restore(8), iptables(8),
insmod(8), modprobe(8)
AUTHORS
ipvsadm - Wensong Zhang <wensong@linuxvirtualserver.org>
Peter Kese <peter.kese@ijs.si>
man page - Mike Wangsmo <wanger@redhat.com>
Wensong Zhang <wensong@linuxvirtualserver.org>
Horms <horms@verge.net.au>