Two weeks ago, I tested a Barracuda Load Balancer Model 340.<\/p>\n
I liked it a lot, all features I needed, quick and easy deployment and administration. No competition for a Citrix VPX 1000 or similar, but it would for sure fulfill all my requirements.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless I wanted see if it is possible to save some money and built the same functionalities with Apache. My test setup was the following.<\/p>\n
1 1x CentOS 6.2 VM with Apache 2 2x Win 2k8 R2 VMs running a Tomcat web server 3 1x Win 2k8 R2 VM running the MSSQL DBMS backend<\/p>\n
My challenge: The Linux box should act as a LoadBalancer in front of the two Tomcat servers. SSL offloading on the Apache can be added later on, mod_security and mod_rewrite can be added as well. And in order to make it bulletproof, keepalived could help making this setup HA.<\/p>\n
Here is my very basic config:<\/p>\n
Apache 2.2 configuration: # create a virtual host and a Proxy balancer #\/etc\/httpd\/conf.d\/vhosts.conf<\/p>\n
LoadModule proxy_module modules\/mod_proxy.so<\/p>\n
\u00a0LoadModule proxy_balancer_module modules\/mod_proxy_balancer.so<\/p>\n
LoadModule proxy_ajp_module modules\/mod_proxy_ajp.so<\/p>\n
<Proxy balancer:\/\/cluster1> \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
BalancerMember ajp:\/\/web1.westwind.cx:8009\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
BalancerMember ajp:\/\/web2.westwind.cx:8009\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
ProxySet lbmethod=bytraffic<\/p>\n
<\/Proxy><\/p>\n
<VirtualHost *:80> \u00a0<\/p>\n