EMULATION OF THE LOAD BALANCING AND HIGH AVAILABILITY COMPUTER CLUSTER FOR NETWORK SERVICES

The paper presents the possibility of establishing an emulation of the load balancing and high availability computer cluster for network service. The basic objective of establishing the emulated computer cluster is checking the feasibility of building laboratory for the cluster emulation. This laboratory can be used for different system testing, for analysing the system components data flows, and for trying out different solutions prior to their actual implementation. This paper describes the methodology of computer cluster emulation using computer emulation via software VirtualBox, computer network emulation via software GNS3, load balancing software HAProxy and high availability software Heartbeat. The paper shows the practical application of the described methodology in emulation of load balancing and high availability computer cluster for web network service which is implemented with software Apache HTTP Server. The paper also describes in detail a high availability computer cluster, load balancing computer cluster and their combination and shows the reasons why it is desirable to establish a laboratory for the emulation of computer cluster. In conclusion, the paper argues the feasibility of laboratory for the emulation of computer cluster, and indicates further development.