LiteSpeed Web ADC is an affordable, high-performance layer 7 HTTP smart load balancer application. LiteSpeed Web ADC is feature-rich, secure, and efficient, offering more flexibility than similarly-priced load balancing software. This makes it an excellent choice for small enterprises looking to scale their applications beyond one server — both to improve service speed as well as reliability in case of hardware failure.

More Information

In this guide we will be showing you how to download and install LiteSpeed Web ADC.

1. A server running Linux or FreeBSD 6.x.
2. A valid LiteSpeed Web ADC License.

Note: It is recommended to run LSLB on a machine separate from your web servers. It is also recommended that you have a dual NIC setup for your LSLB machine. One NIC with an assigned public IP address to handle public facing traffic, and one NIC in a private network with its own subnet (10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x),VLAN, or dedicated switch to handle traffic between LiteSpeed Web ADC and the backend.

Purchase an Owned/Leased LiteSpeed Web ADC License

Request a LiteSpeed Web ADC Trial License

Download the latest version of LiteSpeed Web ADC to the root directory of the machine you will be using to run it and uncompress the downloaded file. We will be using LiteSpeed Web ADC 1.8 in this guide.

For example:

#cd /root
#wget https://www.litespeedtech.com/packages/lslb/lslb-1.8-i386-linux.tar.gz
#tar -zxvf lslb-1.8-i386-linux.tar.gz

Installation must be performed in a command line terminal. For testing purpose, LiteSpeed Load Balancer can be installed into your home directory as a non-privileged user. For production use, it should be installed into a system directory. Under Mac OS X, root user is disabled by default; it can be enabled by using the NetInfo Manager Application in /Applications/Utilities folder. If you don't want to enable root user, you can use “sudo” to install LiteSpeed Load Balancer into a system directory as well.

1. Decompress the package into a convenient location:
   tar xvfz lslb-xxxx.tar.gz or gunzip -c lslb-xxxx.tar.gz | tar xvf -
2. Install license key or serial number.
   • Trial License:
     1. A trial license is for evaluation purposes and is only good for 15 days after download. A trial license can be requested from download page.
     2. A trial license key will be sent to you as an attachment in a confirmation email. Please save the attachment as trial.key and copy it to the installation directory.
     3. When you switch from a trial license to a production license, you can simply run the install script again after following the steps below to update your license.
   • Production license:
     1. Licenses can be leased or purchased at the LiteSpeed store.
     2. A serial number will be sent to you in the confirmation email after you order has been successfully processed. Each serial number allows for one server installation.
     3. Save the serial number as “serial.no”; in the installation directory (where install.sh is located). The LiteSpeed products registration server will use this file to retrieve your license key during the installation process.
3. Go to the installation directory cd lslb-xxxx and run command ./install.sh
   
   The “root” user can install the server into a system directory; non-root user should install it to somewhere under their home directory.
   
   Mac OS X user can install the server into a system directory with command sudo ./install.sh
4. Read the End User License Agreement and type “Yes” to confirm your agreement.
5. Specify the directory where you would like to install LiteSpeed Web ADC. For the root user, the default is /usr/local/lslb. For non-privileged users, the default is their home directory. Remember, non-privileged users will not be able to install the server into a system directory.
6. Generate license request.
   
   If the Installer only finds serial number but no valid license key, it will prompt to generate a license request. The installer will talk to LiteSpeed products registration server and obtain a valid license key automatically. Upon getting the license key, it will go to next step. If failed, the installer will exit and leave a license request file.
   
   If the automatic process failed, you can create a ticket with license department from online store client area.
   
   Note: Installation will continue only if there is a valid trial license or valid Enterprise license.
7. Follow the instructions on the screen.
   1. The following questions will be asked:
   2. User and group that the server process run on behalf of.
   3. Destination directory where the server should be installed.
   4. If an installed copy exists, choose either Update or Reinstall.
   5. Update will keep your current configuration.
   6. Administrator's username and password for the administration web interface.
   7. TCP port for normal web service.
   8. TCP port for web administration interface.
   9. The “root” user has option to enable “chroot”. The installer will setup the initial chroot environment automatically. We strongly recommend not enabling it unless you are familiar with “chroot”. You can always enable it later with an upgrade installation.
   10. The “root” user can also choose to run LiteSpeed Load Balancer as a service which starts automatically at system startup.

1. There are a couple of ways to control the server process. For detail information please see Administration Guide. To start the server, simply run [your_install_dir]/bin/lslbctrl start.
2. If the default port for normal web service was not changed during installation, point your browser to http://[address]:8090/, otherwise replace “8090” with actual port used. “[address]” should be the IP address or domain name of Load Balancer machine. Use “localhost” if it is accessed from the same machine. Load Balancer will try to route request to a default LiteSpeed Web Server installation on localhost, port 8088, if it does not work, try next step. If the default port for web administration interface is not changed during installation, point your browser to http://[address]:7090/, otherwise replace “7090” with actual port used. “[Address]” should be the IP address or domain name of your load balancer machine. Use “localhost” if it is accessed from the same machine. The welcome page of administration interface should be loaded, click “Log on” link and use the administrator's username and password specified during installation to log on. For detailed information regarding configuration, please refer to our Configuration Guide, or click “help” link on top of each page.
3. If your server uses firewall, please make sure that localhost is trusted. For instance, Linux with IPTables should include a rule ALLOW INPUT from LO.
4. If the web administration interface is inaccessible either, please take a look at the error log - [your_install_dir]/logs/error.log
   • If it is because of TCP port confliction with other server applications, the load balancer should be reinstalled with an available port.
     • The following command can be used to find an available port:
       netstat -an | grep XXXX
       XXXX is the port number. If the port is available, no output should be produced.
   • If it is because swapping directory is not writable, you can either grant write permission of swapping directory to the user whom the web server running as, or change the swapping directory manually. The swapping directory is configured in the server's XML configuration file located at [your_install_dir]/conf/lslbd_config.xml, default value is /tmp/lslbd/swap. Search for <swappingDir>.
     
     If you still have problem with installation, please post your problem on our support Forum.

There are a few scenarios that you need to update the server software or license.

• A new release is available
• Upgrade from a trial license to production license
• Upgrade production license from N CPU to M CPU license.

The built-in update agent will check new release periodically and automatically download new package and send email notification about the new release. Server upgrade can be performed via the web admin interface by clicking the upgrade link in the version management page.

For license upgrade, you can manually copy “serial.no” and “license.key” to [your_install_dir]/conf/ directory then restart, it is recommended to backup your old license key first.

Multiple versions of LiteSpeed Load Balancer can be installed and easily switched from one to another by using the version management utility provided [your_install_dir]/admin/misc/mgr_ver.sh.

• To switch to version A, for example 1.0, just run [your_install_dir_current_version]/admin/misc/mgr_ver.sh 1.0
• To remove previous installed files for version A, for example 1.0, just run [your_install_dir_current_version]/admin/misc/mgr_ver.sh -d 1.0

Version management is also available from WebAdmin interface under “Service Manager - Server - Version Management”. It will list all the installed versions and available new releases. You can install new release or switch between different versions by just a click.

Simply run [your_install_dir]/admin/misc/uninstall.sh and follow the instructions on the screen.

The following questions will be asked:

• Whether to keep the log directory
• Whether to keep the configuration directory

All the directories that are not created by the Installer will not be touched, even they are under [your_install_dir]. But all the files created by the Installer will be removed.

[your_install_dir] will be removed as well if it is empty.