Zookeeper v/s hardware loadbalancer

[Rakesh Rajan <ra...@gmail.com>]

I've been looking at Zookeeper recently and wondered how it compares with a
hardware loadbalancer for the following usecases:

1) Service discovery
- Using ZooKeeper, the server would register itself on a common znode which
can be looked up by the client to get a list of registered servers.
- Using H/W loadbalancer, I can have couple of server IPs behind a VIP name
and the client is only aware of the VIP address.

2) Load balancing
- Using ZooKeeper, the load-balancing happens at the client side. (
connection is directly made from the client to the server )
- Using H/W LB, the load-balancing happens at the load-balancer side ( and
hence the connection is routed via LB)

So for the above 2 usescase, are there any specific advantages in using
ZooKeeper over a H/W load-balancer?

Re: Zookeeper v/s hardware loadbalancer

[Ted Dunning <te...@gmail.com>]

Well for one thing zookeeper is cheaper than a load balancer. 

For another, putting a load balancer in the middle of all of your internal flows is a pain in the posterior and can seriously mess with your throughput. 

And finally, having a program update zookeeper is whackingly easier than writing a reliable program to update your load balancer. 

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 12, 2011, at 9:49 PM, Rakesh Rajan <ra...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been looking at Zookeeper recently and wondered how it compares with a
> hardware loadbalancer for the following usecases:
> 
> 1) Service discovery
> - Using ZooKeeper, the server would register itself on a common znode which
> can be looked up by the client to get a list of registered servers.
> - Using H/W loadbalancer, I can have couple of server IPs behind a VIP name
> and the client is only aware of the VIP address.
> 
> 2) Load balancing
> - Using ZooKeeper, the load-balancing happens at the client side. (
> connection is directly made from the client to the server )
> - Using H/W LB, the load-balancing happens at the load-balancer side ( and
> hence the connection is routed via LB)
> 
> So for the above 2 usescase, are there any specific advantages in using
> ZooKeeper over a H/W load-balancer?