IP Transparency with the ZXTM software

The ZXTM appliance supports full IP transparency, and the IP transparency module is fully supported for all customers and evaluators running ZXTM or ZXTM LB as software on a supported Linux system.

The following only applies to customers and evaluators running ZXTM 4.0 or later on a supported Linux system (kernels 2.6.11 to 2.6.31). IP Transparency is included in the ZXTM Appliances (physical and virtual).

Why use the IP Transparency module?

Without IP transparency, all requests that ZXTM passes to the back-end servers appear to come from one of the ZXTM server’s' IP addresses. The true client IP address isn’'t directly available to the back end servers. A back end application needs to inspect the 'X-Cluster-Client-Ip' header that ZXTM adds to each HTTP request, or use one of the IP transparency application modules.

The IP transparency module makes the server-side connections which originate from ZXTM appear to originate directly from the remote client.

Obtaining the IP Transparency module

Configuration

IP Transparency requires that you change the routing configuration on each back-end server. Section 2.4: 'IP Transparency' in the ZXTM User Manual describes the configuration changes in detail.

Changes

2.2 - 30th June 2010

• Recommend minimum kernel version 2.6.11

2.1 - 13th January 2010

• Support kernels 2.6.8 -> 2.6.31

2.0 - 19th October 2009

• Support kernels 2.6.8 -> 2.6.28
• Add the 'zcluster' kernel module for multi-hosted IP address support (see this article)

1.6 - 26th January 2009

• Support kernels 2.6.8 -> 2.6.27

1.5 - 1st May 2008

• Support kernels 2.6.8 -> 2.6.24

1.4 - 6th September 2007

• Fix a memory leak (introduced in version 1.3).

1.3 - 6th July 2007

• Support kernels 2.6.8 -> 2.6.21
• UDP Transparency is now supported (using ZXTM 4.2)

1.2 - 18th December 2006

• Support kernels 2.6.8 -> 2.6.19

1.0 - 7 April 2006

• Support TCP transparency
• Support kernels 2.6.8 -> 2.6.15

Owen Garrett [Zeus Dev Team] 12 April 2006 6 comments