Rob Cooper - Insights from the load balancer experts

Lead Technical Author/Architect

Rob Cooper

Rob's been with the company since 2010 and helps to maintain the critical link between the Sales, Support and Development departments by providing deployment, testing and documentation skills. He’s also responsible for all Microsoft and VMware approvals and certifications and ensuring ongoing compliance. When not at the Loadbalancer.org offices he enjoys getting out on his boat as well as playing bass guitar.

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Multi-site Active-Active Splunk SmartStore with NetApp StorageGRID and Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB)

3 August 2021 • 5 mins

Multi-site Active-Active Splunk SmartStore with NetApp StorageGRID and Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB)

Splunk Enterprise enables you to search, analyze, and visualize the data gathered from the components of your IT infrastructure or business.

Are the Microsoft apps you depend on dependable enough?!

8 July 2021 • 4 mins

Are the Microsoft apps you depend on dependable enough?!

Hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world rely on Microsoft applications to deliver their fundamental IT services. However, these apps aren't always 100% dependable.

Seamless load balancer recovery - as easy as 1, 2, 3

High Availability

1 July 2016 • 2 mins

Seamless load balancer recovery - as easy as 1, 2, 3

So, you've configured two Loadbalancer.org appliances as a clustered pair for high availability, the pair has been working fine but then one day you receive an email alert that one of the pair has failed for some reason.

Load balancing Microsoft Remote Desktop Services in AWS

Application Management

9 March 2016 • 2 mins

Load balancing Microsoft Remote Desktop Services in AWS

Using the flexibility of both AWS and our Enterprise AWS appliance, it's possible to configure a secure and robust load balanced Remote Desktop Services deployment to suit a range of requirements.

Enhanced Microsoft IIS health checks using VBscript

20 August 2014 • 3 mins

Enhanced Microsoft IIS health checks using VBscript

By default, the load balancer uses a TCP connect to the port defined in the Virtual Service to verify the health of each real (backend) server. For IIS, this would typically be port 80.

Windows NLB (WNLB) and its disadvantages

16 July 2014 • 1 min

Windows NLB (WNLB) and its disadvantages

WNLB causes switch flooding and does not support multiple scheduling algorithms for distributing client load.

Stunnel X-Forward-For (XFF) with HAProxy and the PROXY Protocol

18 June 2014 • 3 mins

Stunnel X-Forward-For (XFF) with HAProxy and the PROXY Protocol

By default, the source IP address of the packet reaching the web servers is the IP address of the load balancer and not the IP address of the client.

Heartbleed 2.0? Not exactly but more OpenSSL issues have been found

9 June 2014 • 1 min

Heartbleed 2.0? Not exactly but more OpenSSL issues have been found

Whilst the Heartbleed bug was relatively easy to exploit, the latest batch of bugs are not.

Loadbalancer.org releases patch for the OpenSSL heartbleed vulnerability CVE-2014-0160

10 April 2014 • 2 mins

Loadbalancer.org releases patch for the OpenSSL heartbleed vulnerability CVE-2014-0160

To ensure complete protection all SSL certificates that have been used with a vulnerable version of OpenSSL should be regenerated using a new private key.

Load Balancing Exchange 2013

Application Management

14 February 2014 • 2 mins

Load Balancing Exchange 2013

Exchange 2013 is Microsoft's latest enterprise level messaging and collaboration server. It has been designed for simplicity of scale, hardware utilization, and failure isolation.

Load Balancing Exchange 2010

Application Management

14 February 2014 • 2 mins

Load Balancing Exchange 2010

In Exchange 2010, system functionality is split into five server roles (Mailbox, Client Access (CAS), Unified Messaging, Hub Transport (HT) and Edge Transport). Mandatory roles are Mailbox, Client Access and Hub Transport.

Load balancing Microsoft Print Server

6 September 2011 • 6 mins

Load balancing Microsoft Print Server

Microsoft Print Server provides a great way to share printers throughout your organisation, but when the print server falls over, the phone quickly starts to ring.

Identifying the originating IP address

Application Management

9 February 2011 • 4 mins

Apache and X-Forwarded-For Header (XFF)

There’s been a lot of debate here in the office about how best to capture both your Loadbalancer’s IP and the Source IP of the user in your access_log in Apache 2.4. This is the tried and tested method we've come up with.

client source IP addresses and IIS logs

4 February 2011 • 4 mins

IIS and X-Forwarded-For Header (XFF)

Although it's not technically a standard, the X-Forwarded-For (XFF) header is incredibly useful if you have any kind of proxy in front of your web servers.

Load balancing Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) with HAProxy

23 March 2010 • 2 mins

Load balancing Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) with HAProxy

Here at Loadbalancer.org we have recently started the certification process of our product with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS).