What is Alteon? #

Alteon is a load balancer originally developed by Alteon WebSystems, later acquired by Nortel Networks, and currently maintained by Radware. It is a network appliance designed to optimize traffic distribution across multiple servers, ensuring high availability, scalability, and efficient use of server resources. By routing traffic intelligently, Alteon helps improve performance and prevent server overloads, enhancing the overall user experience in large-scale web applications.

Core Concepts of Alteon Load Balancer #

1. Load Balancing: Alteon ensures that incoming traffic is evenly distributed across multiple servers. This can be done using different algorithms such as round-robin, least connections, and weighted balancing.
2. High Availability: Alteon supports redundancy by allowing for failover between multiple devices, ensuring that if one instance goes down, the others continue handling the traffic seamlessly.
3. Session Persistence: It ensures that users’ requests are sent to the same server they connected to initially during a session. This is crucial for applications that rely on user-specific states, such as online banking or e-commerce platforms.
4. SSL Offloading: Alteon can handle the encryption and decryption of SSL traffic, offloading this resource-intensive process from the backend servers.
5. Health Monitoring: Alteon regularly checks the health of servers to make sure that only healthy servers are sent traffic. If a server fails, Alteon will automatically redirect traffic to a healthy server.
6. Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB): This feature extends load balancing across geographically distributed servers, routing users to the server closest to them to reduce latency.

The Current Status of Alteon: Obsolescence #

In recent years, Alteon has been marked as obsolete in many IT infrastructures. Although it is still maintained by Radware, newer technologies, cloud-native solutions, and more advanced load balancing platforms have taken its place. Several factors contribute to the phase-out of Alteon:

• Cloud Migration: Modern applications are increasingly moving to cloud-native infrastructures (AWS, Azure, GCP), where load balancing is offered as part of managed services. Alteon’s appliance-based architecture is not suited for this dynamic, containerized environment.
• Security Updates: With older models, there may be concerns about receiving timely security patches and updates, putting organizations at risk.
• Performance Bottlenecks: The older hardware of legacy Alteon devices can struggle with the demands of modern, high-traffic environments, where applications require faster, more adaptive load balancing.

Due to these factors, organizations are migrating away from Alteon in favor of more modern solutions like RELIANOID’s load balancing technology.

Understanding Alteon Configuration Files #

Alteon configuration files hold the settings and policies that dictate how traffic should be handled. These files typically contain rules regarding:

• Virtual IPs (VIPs): IP addresses where the Alteon listens for incoming traffic before distributing it.
• Real Servers: Definitions of the backend servers, including their IP addresses and health monitoring settings.
• SSL Certificates: If SSL offloading is being used, the configuration file will contain references to SSL certificates and keys.
• Load Balancing Policies: This includes the load balancing algorithm, session persistence settings, and any other traffic manipulation rules.

For large environments, the configuration files can be quite complex, with hundreds of VIPs, real servers, and associated rules. Understanding and parsing these files is crucial for a successful migration.

Migrating from Alteon to RELIANOID Load Balancer #

Migrating from Alteon to RELIANOID can be an efficient process, provided the right steps are followed. RELIANOID’s load balancer offers a more modern, flexible, and scalable solution that is cloud-native and aligns with the needs of current enterprise applications.

Migration Steps #

1. Assessment of Current Configuration: Start by extracting and reviewing the configuration files from Alteon. This includes all virtual servers, health checks, and SSL settings.
2. Mapping to RELIANOID Features: Next, map Alteon’s configuration to RELIANOID. RELIANOID provides equivalent features, such as session persistence, health monitoring, and SSL offloading, but in a more flexible and cloud-friendly manner.
3. Testing the Migration in a Staging Environment: Before deploying to production, test the migration in a staging environment. RELIANOID’s interface allows easy importation of configuration settings, ensuring that no downtime or disruption occurs.
4. Handling SSL Certificates: Ensure all SSL certificates are correctly migrated to RELIANOID. Given that SSL offloading is crucial for modern applications, having the right certificates in place is essential.
5. Monitoring Post-Migration: After migration, utilize RELIANOID’s real-time monitoring tools to ensure that traffic is being distributed as expected and that all backend servers are healthy.

Configuration Examples #

Network Segmentation with VLANs #

Alteon Configuration:

/c/vlan 101
    ena
    name "Public FEPs"
    jumbo ena
    def 1 2 3 4 5 9

RELIANOID CLI Commands:

noid-cli(localhost): network-vlan create -name eth1.101 -ip 200.30.120.2 -netmask 255.255.255.0

Explanation:

VLAN 101 (Public FEPs) is mapped to interface eth1 in RELIANOID. The command assigns an IP (200.30.120.2) and subnet mask (255.255.255.0).

Server Load Balancing (SLB) #

Alteon Configuration:

/c/slb/real 1
    ena
    rip 200.30.120.33
    addport 53

RELIANOID CLI Commands:

noid-cli(localhost): farm-service-backend add virt1-dns default_service -ip 200.30.120.33

Explanation:

The backend server with IP 200.30.120.33 is added to the DNS service farm (virt1-dns) in RELIANOID.

Virtual Services (VIPs) #

Alteon Configuration:

/c/slb/virt 1
    ena
    vip 200.30.120.40

/c/slb/virt 1/service http
    group 14

RELIANOID CLI Commands:

noid-cli(localhost): farm create -farmname virt1-web -profile l4xnat -vip 200.30.120.40 -vport 80,443
noid-cli(localhost): farm set virt1-web -protocol tcp -nattype nat

Explanation:

VIP 200.30.120.40 is set up in RELIANOID with HTTP/HTTPS services.

DNS Load Balancing #

Alteon Configuration:

/c/slb/virt 1/service dns
    group 18
    udp enabled

RELIANOID CLI Commands:

noid-cli(localhost): farm create -farmname virt1-dns -profile l4xnat -vip 200.30.120.40 -vport 53
noid-cli(localhost): farm set virt1-dns -protocol udp -nattype nat
noid-cli(localhost): farm-service-backend add virt1-dns default_service -ip 200.30.120.74

Explanation:

DNS requests are load balanced across backend server 200.30.120.74 via the virtual service on VIP 200.30.120.40.

Application-Specific Configurations #

Alteon Configuration:

/c/slb/group 10
    metric roundrobin
    health radius
    add 4

RELIANOID CLI Commands:

noid-cli(localhost): farm create -farmname virt2-radius -profile l4xnat -vip 202.1.117.1 -vport 1812
noid-cli(localhost): farm set virt2-radius -protocol udp -nattype nat
noid-cli(localhost): farm-service-backend add virt2-radius default_service -ip 203.10.124.36

Explanation:

Maps the RADIUS farm with a round-robin algorithm and backend health checks.

Conclusion #

Alteon has served as a reliable load balancer for many years, but with the evolution of cloud-native and dynamic environments, it’s no longer the optimal solution. Migrating to RELIANOID offers numerous benefits, including cloud-native architecture, advanced monitoring, and ease of configuration. By carefully analyzing your Alteon setup and following a structured migration plan, you can transition seamlessly to RELIANOID, ensuring continued high performance and scalability.