Table of Contents

A
C
F
G
L
M
R
S
V

glossary

A
affinity	Set of information that uniquely describes the association of a client to a particular host within a server cluster. It relates the addresses found in the IP packet (protocol, client IP address, port, local port, cluster address) to the IP address of the local host assigned to handle all packets with that unique set of addresses.
Accelerated Server Load Balancing	See ASLB.
ASLB	Accelerated Server Load Balancing. Feature implemented on the Catalyst 6000 which accelerates flows set up by an external server load balancer, such as LocalDirector.

C
CoFA	Content Flow Architecture. Cisco's architecture describing message flows and actions in a distributed environment. CoFA is the communications protocol between the services manager and the forwarding agent.
Content Flow Architecture	See CoFA.

F
forwarding agent	Packet redirector that forwards packets based on decisions made by the services manager. The forwarding agent filters packets coming into the virtual network and sends packets without a known server destination to the services manager.

G
Gemini	Application for configuring and managing a LocalDirector and its associated real servers and virtual servers.

L
load balancing	Spreads user requests among available servers within a cluster of servers, based on a variety of algorithms.
LocalDirector	Cisco LocalDirector is hardware and software solution that provides one of the platforms for the services manager. LocalDirector has an embedded operation system that is a subset of the Cisco IOS software. LocalDirector provides advanced load balancing features, such as SSL sticky and packet coloring and supports up to 240-Mbps throughput and 18,000 connections per second.

M
MNLB	MultiNode Load Balancing. Load balancing solution that uses a multinode architecture, with multiple load balancing devices working in tandem to achieve the highest level of availability, scalability, and performance for server applications. MNLB comprises software running on Cisco routers and switches, Cisco's LocalDirector, and application server platforms.
MultiNode Load Balancing	See MNLB.

R
real server	Physical computing engine or part of a physical computing engine that offers one or more application services to a set of clients in the network. This includes Windows NT or Solaris servers.

S

services manager

The brains of server load balancing, a services manager makes load balancing decisions based on application availability, server capacity, and load distribution algorithms, such as round robin or least connections. Using load balancing and server/application feedback, the services manager determines a real server for the packet flow and sends this information to the requesting forwarding agent. Once the optimal destination is decided, all other packets in the packet flow are directed to a real server by the forwarding agent, increasing packet throughput.

V
virtual server	Presents a single virtual IP address that represents an application server farm for clients.

Posted: Sun Apr 2 12:27:19 PDT 2000
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