Rackspace Cloud Load Balancer as a Service is awesome. It is an amazing product that makes load balancing sites really easy and abstracts away having to setup and configure one on your own. As of right now, it is only available via the API while a full blown GUI is being developed for the control panel. The API docs are very good and can be found at http://docs.rackspacecloud.com/loadbalancers/api/clb-devguide-latest.pdf
UPDATE: Forget this exists. Caleb Groom has an awesome project on github that uses python and will let you manage your Load Balancers. https://github.com/calebgroom/clb
Creating a Load Balancer requires you to authenticate with your Username and API key, and then create an XML request that you send that has all of your settings in it. I made a very, very simply bash script that will write the XML for you. I’m not a programmer. This can be improved immensely and there is no error catching or validation that what you type in is right.
Anyway, here is the script:
#! /bin/bash echo "What is the Auth Token?" read AUTH echo "What is the Account Number?" read ACCT echo "Choose a Location (dfw or ord)" read LOC echo "What type of IP do you want allocated to this server? (PUBLIC or PRIVATE)" read VIP echo "Load Balancer Name (AlphaNumeric, No Spaces or Underscores)" read LBNAME echo "What Port should the Load balancer listen on? (21, 80, 143, 110, 389, 636, 443, 993, 25)" read LBPORT echo "What Protocol should the Load Balancer Use (FTP, HTTP, IMAPv4, POP3, LDAP, LDAPS, HTTPS, IMAPS, POP3S, SMTP)" read LBPROTO echo "LB Algo (LEAST_CONNECTIONS, RANDOM, ROUND_ROBIN, WEIGHTED_LEAST_CONNECTIONS, WEIGHTED_ROUND_ROBIN)" read LBALGO echo "How Many nodes?" read NUMNODES set NODES="" for (( I=1 ; I<=$NUMNODES ; I++)) do echo "Node $I Address" read NODEIP echo "Node $I port" read NODEPORT echo "Node $I Weight" read NODEWEIGHT NODES=$NODES"" done SENDCURL="curl -H \"X-Auth-Token: $AUTH\" -H \"content-type: application/xml\" -d '$NODES' -X POST https://$LOC.loadbalancers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/$ACCT/loadbalancers" echo $SENDCURL
So before you run that you will need to authenticate and get your Auth token. to do that, run the following curl:
curl -D – -H “X-Auth-User: YourUsername” -H “X-Auth-Key: YourAPIKey” https://auth.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0
After you run that, it will spit out a list of names and values, like this:
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:15:28 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Mosso Engineering)
X-Storage-Url: https://storage101.dfw1.clouddrive.com/v1/MossoCloudFS_6f597497-4986-44ea-9081-1234567890
X-Storage-Token: 63ea9670-c80f-402d-9657-1234567890
X-CDN-Management-Url: https://cdn1.clouddrive.com/v1/MossoCloudFS_6f597497-4986-44ea-9081-68b8ee123456
X-Auth-Token: 63ea9670-c80f-402d-9657-c59bdb123456
X-Server-Management-Url: https://servers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/123456
Content-Length: 0
Connection: close
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
You will need the Auth Token. In the made up example above that would be 63ea9670-c80f-402d-9657-c59bdb123456. You will also need your account number. In the example above that is listed under X-Server-Management. In the fake example that is 123456.
Once you have those, invoke the bash script above with something like
sh makelb.sh
It will ask you some questions, most of them give you a list of available options. Once it is done asking questions it will spit out the curl command for you to run. Here is an example:
M0Z8AGY:bin josh.prewitt$ sh makelbass.sh What is the Auth Token? 63ea9670-c80f-402d-9657-c59bdb123456 What is the Account Number? 123456 Choose a Location (dfw or ord) ord What type of IP do you want allocated to this server? (PUBLIC or PRIVATE) PUBLIC Load Balancer Name (AlphaNumeric, No Spaces or Underscores) LB-Name-Test What Port should the Load balancer listen on? (21, 80, 143, 110, 389, 636, 443, 993, 25) 80 What Protocol should the Load Balancer Use (FTP, HTTP, IMAPv4, POP3, LDAP, LDAPS, HTTPS, IMAPS, POP3S, SMTP) HTTP LB Algo (LEAST_CONNECTIONS, RANDOM, ROUND_ROBIN, WEIGHTED_LEAST_CONNECTIONS, WEIGHTED_ROUND_ROBIN) ROUND_ROBIN How Many nodes? 3 Node 1 Address 10.1.1.1 Node 1 port 80 Node 1 Weight 1 Node 2 Address 10.2.2.2 Node 2 port 80 Node 2 Weight 1 Node 3 Address 10.3.3.3 Node 3 port 80 Node 3 Weight 1 curl -H "X-Auth-Token: 63ea9670-c80f-402d-9657-c59bdb123456" -H "content-type: application/xml" -d '' -X POST https://ord.loadbalancers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/123456/loadbalancers
That’s it, copy and paste the curl command that it spits out and that will create the Load Balancer for you. Like I said, this is a VERY simple script that I primarily use just for setting up test load balancers. If you improve on it and make it totally awesome drop me a link!