[ale] NAT overhead question

[attriel]

So, I'm working on setting up a new 'system' (LVS and vserv's, it's not
pretty :o) and I'm working on a tight budget, so throwing money at things
is not a viable solution ...

I know LVS (? Linux Virtual Server; the one that does load distribution
tasks to other servers) works at the iptables level, and (due to other
constraints, yay) the servers it will be serving to are all on an internal
network, so it'll also be doing NAT translation ...

I'm trying to figure out if I go SAN (NAS? I never remember which is
which, unfortunately) and have the internal servers serve the files up and
through the NAT, and spring for dual 1000/T cards for the internet-enabled
box, so it can handle the traffic, or put together a fileserver that gets
it's own IP address and gigabit network, and leave the NAT to just the
web-page traffic ...

Obviously, for security, I'd prefer to just have the one box live and NAT
everything, but I don't know how painful the NAT overhead would be and how
fast I'd end up CPU-bound ...

Does anyone know any kind of statistics or where I might look to find out?

Thanks!

--attriel


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