Rackspace Load Balancers network issues and “desperate” solution
By Emanuele “Lele” Calò
May 1, 2013
Most people in IT already know the common “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” joke and about all of them also know that sometimes it just works.
In a sense that’s what I experienced with Rackspace Load Balancers when after a day of networking troubleshooting, which involved (but was not limited to):
- iptables rules proof-reading
- overlapping network mask checks
- tcpdump network traffic troubleshooting
- software functionality testing both via localhost and different hosts
I had an enlightenment moment when I realized that while I was waiting for the next desperate solution to pop out some remote areas of my brain I could just remove all nodes from the load balancer (via the web interface) and then add them back, without actually making any other change. Well it turns out that this was the solution that I was looking for after a day of reckless debugging.
So lesson learned: before hurting yourself, try once again the most simple, obvious and possibly silly answers… and just a second before considering the impossible become possible, try “turning it off and on once again”.
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