{"id":101,"date":"2007-08-17T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/free-load-balancer-possible-connection-broker-for-vdi.html"},"modified":"2007-08-17T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-17T11:00:00","slug":"free-load-balancer-possible-connection-broker-for-vdi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/free-load-balancer-possible-connection-broker-for-vdi\/","title":{"rendered":"Free load balancer (possible connection broker) for VDI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking for an alternative (free) Connection Broker solution I stumbled across Crossroads.<\/p>\n

It is a little application that will run on pretty much any current Linux\/OSX build, and will load balance specific IP\u2019s, ports.<\/p>\n

Just because I wanted something quick and easy to test this on, I downloaded Ubuntu Desktop 6.0.6 LTS to try it out on.<\/p>\n

Download Crossroads here<\/a>. I chose the 1.48 build, as it is the latest stable (at the time of this writing).<\/p>\n

So, download it, to your Linux system, and unpack it, and install it.
I downloaded\/copied it to \/tmp, and installed it as follows:<\/p>\n

Unpacking the archive<\/span>
root@ubuntu:\/tmp# gunzip crossroads-stable.tar.gz
root@ubuntu:\/tmp# tar \u2013xvf crossroads-stable.tar
root@ubuntu:\/tmp# cd crossroads-1.48<\/p>\n

Compiling\/Installing Crossroads
<\/span>(make sure you have a C compiler like gcc installed)<\/span>
root@ubuntu:\/tmp\/crossroads-1.48# make install
root@ubuntu:\/tmp\/crossroads-1.48# touch \/etc\/crossroads.conf<\/p>\n

Basic Configuring of Crossroads<\/span>
edit \/etc\/crossroads.conf (with the below configuration)<\/p>\n


service rdp {
port 3389;
revivinginterval 15;
backend one {
        server 10.1.1.100:3389;
        maxconnections 1;
        setserverheader \"X-Real-IP: %r\";
        trafficlog \/tmp\/backend.1.log;
       }
backend two {
        server 10.1.1.101:3389;
        maxconnections 1;
        setserverheader \"X-Real-IP: %r\";
        trafficlog \/tmp\/backend.2.log;
        }
}<\/pre>\n
I set the “maxconnections” to 1, because if I have XP\/Vista desktops on the backend, I don’t want someone attempting to connect to one that already has an active connection.<\/p>\n
Starting Crossroads<\/span>
\/usr\/local\/bin\/crossroads start<\/p>\n
Checking the status of Crossroads<\/span>
\/usr\/local\/bin\/crossroads status<\/p>\n
Stopping Crossroads<\/span>
\/usr\/local\/bin\/crossroads stop<\/p>\n
Keep in mind, this is just a rudimentary implementation of Crossroads in a Connection Broker capacity.<\/p>\n
The Crossroads documentation gives more parameters and information to have it start automatically at different run levels, allowed from\/denied from, etc.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the default Makedef.def is setup for a maximum of 20 connections<\/span>.  So, before you compile it, adjust the number accordingly.<\/p>\n
The config file (\/etc\/crossroads.conf) also has many additional settings, that can customize the connections, including things such as allowed\/denied addresses, etc.<\/p>\n
The Web Interface<\/span>
There is also a web gui that will display connections\/etc.
To start it up, run \/usr\/local\/bin\/crossroads-mgr start PORT<\/p>\n
So if you run \/usr\/local\/bin\/crossroads-mgr start 80, you should see something like this:<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Now, in a production environment, I’d recommend creating a hardened Linux VM, and really tweaking \/etc\/crossroads.conf to get the best performance and security.<\/p>\n
This could be a really viable solution in a small environment where costs play a significant factor.<\/p>\n
As can be seen it really isn’t hard to do, doesn’t take long, and (by reading the docs) can be locked down enough to be a cheap (free) solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Looking for an alternative (free) Connection Broker solution I stumbled across Crossroads. It is a little application that will run on pretty much any current … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-virtualization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}