How to recover your load balancers to v6.6 via USB stick
by Jake Borman
The following instructions detail how to recover any Loadbalancer.org appliance to v6.6 via any USB stick 1 Gb or greater.
NB. This will only work on 64Bit hardware. All version 6 appliances are 64Bit. If you are running an older version this may still be possible depending on the hardware you are running on.
If you are running v5 and wish to determine whether your appliance is 64Bit then enter the following command:
grep flags /proc/cpuinfo
If lm (long mode) is present in the output then they are 64Bit and you can proceed. If not then your appliance is 32Bit and you are limited to the latest v5 software.
NB. Loadbalancer.org are continuing to develop and support v5.
The v6.6 image requires a high speed 4Gb IDE DOM / Flash. If you are already running v6 then you will already have this and should be able to simply re-image your current DOM / Flash. If you are upgrading from v5 you will need to purchase a 4Gb DOM / flash card and then use the following procedure to build it from any USB stick 1Gb or greater:
NB. If you are already running v6 then you can keep your current configuration by backing up the XML file on BOTH the master and the slave. This can then be uploaded to the new v6 appliance once the following steps have been completed.
The USB stick bootable version of the ISO file is here:
http://www.loadbalancer.org/download/v6.6g.iso
You can use UNetBootIn (Windows or Linux) to transfer the ISO onto a USB stick.
Then change the server BIOS to boot from the USB (stick must be plugged in at that stage).
 First boot device (Removable) |
 Hard disk boot priority (USB) |
When it boots choose the:
Default
image
Then at the command line do:
cd /etc/recovery/
./clone-dsk.sh
option 1.
Then
option 1.
Then Yes to all.
The image transfers onto any IDE HD or IDE DOM / Flash.
You now have a fully functioning v6.6 appliance!
NB. If you need to upload a previous configuration go to Maintenance > Disaster Recovery in the web interface to upload a backup XML file.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
On the subject of load balancing, why not get the highest availability while not getting caught in high prices? Kemp’s got some great load balancers that are low priced and high in quality:
http://www.kemptechnologiesSPAM.com/JUSTBREAKINGTHISSPAM?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=pv&utm_content=zs&utm_campaign=home
May 14th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Good grief… Kemp need to fire their PR agency… That’s just plain rude posting SPAM like that to a competitors site, as if I would allow that comment… ooops just did.
Maybe they got upset about this page: http://loadbalancer.org/whyr16.html
Probably explains why they dumped the 1500, went Gigabit only and increased the price by £1,000.
Still at least they have a much better load balancer than Barracuda.
On a similar note we just got a cease and desist from Coyote Point Systems for using their logo… but at least they were very polite about it, and we removed it immediately.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Good grief!
That really is scrapping the bottom of the barrel indeed!
A company’s marketing tactics personifies the company in my mind. Poor show!
I admire your decision to keep this post live.