Product Overview - Cisco catalyst 6500 series Configuration Note

Product Overview

The Catalyst 6500 series Content Switching Module (CSM) provides high-performance server load
balancing (SLB) among groups of servers, server farms, firewalls, caches, VPN termination devices, and
other network devices, based on Layer 3 as well as Layer 4 through Layer 7 packet information.
Server farms are groups of load-balanced devices. Server farms that are represented as virtual servers
can improve scalability and availability of services for your network. You can add new servers and
remove failed or existing servers at any time without affecting the virtual server's availability.
Clients connect to the CSM directing their requests to the virtual IP (VIP) address of the virtual server.
When a client initiates a connection to the virtual server, the CSM chooses a real server (a physical
device that is assigned to a server farm) for the connection based on configured load-balancing
algorithms and policies (access rules). Policies manage traffic by defining where to send client
connections.
Sticky connections limit traffic to individual servers by allowing multiple connections from the same
client to stick (or attach) to the same real server using source IP addresses, source IP subnets, cookies,
and the secure socket layer (SSL) or by redirecting these connections using Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP) redirect messages.
These sections describe the CSM:
Features, page 1-2
•
Front Panel Description, page 1-5
•
• Operation, page 1-7
Traffic Flow, page 1-8
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C H A P T E R
Catalyst 6500 Series Content Switching Module Configuration Note
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