Apache HTTP Server
Load-Balancing with Apache HTTPD 2.2 and later
Erik Abele
www.eatc.de
About Me
• Working internationally as IT Consultant
• Areas: Administration & Operations
• Working on and with Open Source
• Apache Software Foundation
• Other projects (Ruby, Zenoss, ...)
• Living in South Germany
Content
• Basics
• Strategies
• Examples
• Questions
Basics
Why Load-Balancing?
• Optimizing Resource Utilization
• Maximizing Quality of Service
• Increasing Reliability & Availability
• Improving Security
• Lowering Administration Risks
Approaches
• DNS-Based Load-Balancing
• Round Robin
• Geographical Scheduling
• Layer 4 Load-Balancing
• Layer 7 Load-Balancing
• Hardware-/Software-Based Load-Balancers
DNS-Based Balancing
• Clients resolve
FQDN
• Response with
several IPs or
choosen
randomly or
e.g. according
to proximity
Layer 4 Balancing
• Transport Layer
• Deals with TCP connections
• Routes pure packets
• NAT with port and transaction awareness
Layer 7 Balancing
• Application Layer
• Deals with HTTP requests
• Forwards whole requests
• Gateway / Reverse Proxy
Layer 4-7 Balancing
• Combination: routing
packets but aware of
HTTP content
• Load-Balancer acts
as a multilayer switch
• Basic schema always
the same
Hardware-Based LBs
• Mostly real routers/switches with ML capabilites
• Pros
• Very fast
• Cons
• Expensive
• Proprietary
• Examples: Cisco LoadDirector, F5 Big/ip, Barracuda
Software-Based LBs
• Software-based appliances or just packages
• Pros
• Cheaper and also available as Open Source
• Simpler to configure and often more flexible
• Cons
• Not as fast as hardware based solutions
• Examples: Pen, Pound, Squid, Linux VS, Zeus ZXTM
Balancer Features 1
• TCP Offloading
• TCP Buffering
• SSL Offloading & Acceleration
• HTTP Caching
• HTTP Compression
• Client Authentication
• Attack Protection & Firewalling
Balancer Features 2
• Content-Aware Load-Balancing
• Request Rate Shaping
• Bandwidth Shaping
• Traffic Valuation & Prioritization
• Programmatic Traffic Manipulation
Balancing Algorithms
• Random Choice
• Round Robin
• Weighted Round Robin
• Request counting algorithm
• Weighted traffic counting algorithm
• Based on other factors (load, response time, ...)
Strategies
Gateway
• “Reverse Proxy” - the frontend:
• Apache HTTPD with mod_proxy and
mod_proxy_balancer as well as one of:
• mod_proxy_http
• mod_proxy_ajp
Application Servers
• A pool of servers - the backend:
• Apache HTTP with PHP, Perl, ...
• Apache Tomcat, JBoss, Glassfish, ...
• Zope, CherryPy, Mongrel, WebRick
• ...
Focus: Scalability
• A single load-balancer in front of a pool of
application servers
Persistence
• “Session Stickiness”
• A problem when not able to use a shared
data store for the application (e.g. when
using multiple physical locations where
replication becomes problematic)
• Alternative: using cookies as data store
Focus: Resilience
• Two or more load-balancers in front of a pool of
application servers
Failover
• Active/Active
• Both load-balancers are actively serving requests
• Active/Passive
• Only one load-balancer is actively serving
requests, the other one takes over in case of
failure
• There needs to be a way to detect failures
Focus: Globalization
• Several groups of load-balancers in more
than one physical location
Location Selection
• DNS-Based
• Round Robin
• Based on geographical proximity
• Based on utilization of location
• FQDN-Based (e.g. wwwN.example.com)
Examples
HTTPD as Gateway
• Required Modules:
• mod_proxy
• mod_proxy_balancer
• mod_proxy_http / mod_proxy_ajp
• mod_proxy_ftp
HTTP Backends
• Requires extension module:
mod_proxy_http
• Usage:
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.1:8080 ...
AJP Backends
• Requires extension module:
mod_proxy_ajp
• Usage:
BalancerMember ajp://1.1.1.1: 8009 ...
Basic Configuration
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.example.com
...
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyVia Off
ProxyErrorOverride On
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyTimeout 30
ProxyPass / balancer://app_farm lbmethod=byrequests maxattempts=3 \
nofailover=Off stickysession=SID
<Proxy balancer://app_farm>
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.1:8080 smax=15 max=50 lbfactor=2
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.2:8080 smax=15 max=50 lbfactor=2
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.3:8080 smax=10 max=25 lbfactor=1
</Proxy>
</VirtualHost>
Connection Pooling
• min
Minimum number of connections that will always
be open to the backend server
• max
Hard Maximum number of connections that will
be allowed to the backend server
• smax & ttl
Soft Maximum number of connections that will be
created on demand, TTL for connect’s above smax
Parameters 1
• lbmethod
The load-balancing scheduler method to
use, e.g.
• weighted request counting
• weighted traffic counting
• lbset
Assigns a specific cluster set to members
Parameters 2
• loadfactor
Defines the normalized weighted load
applied to this balancer member, e.g.
• loadfactor=1
• loadfactor=2 <- twice as much req’s / IO
• status
Defines the initial state of this member
Hot-Standby
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.example.com
...
ProxyPass / balancer://app_farm lbmethod=byrequests maxattempts=3 \
nofailover=Off stickysession=SID
<Proxy balancer://app_farm>
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.1:8080 ...
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.2:8080 ...
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.3:8080 ... status=+H
</Proxy>
</VirtualHost>
Sticky Sessions
• Supported by stickysession flag:
stickysession=PHPSESSID
stickysession=JSESSIONID|jsessionid
Environment Variables
• Generated by mod_proxy
• X-Forwarded-For
• X-Forwarded-Host
• X-Forwarded-Server
• Influence mod_proxy
• SetEnv force-proxy-request-1.0 1
• SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
ProxyPassReverse
ProxyPass / balancer://app_farm ...
ProxyPassReverse / http://1.1.1.1:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://1.1.1.2:8080/
<Proxy balancer://app_farm>
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.1:8080 ...
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.2:8080 ...
</Proxy>
URL Rewriting
ProxyPass ~ ^/+(.*)$ balancer://app_farm/$1 ...
[or]
ProxyPassMatch ^/+(.*)$ balancer://app_farm/$1 ...
[or]
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/.balancer
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^/+(.*)$ balancer://app_farm/$1 [P,L]
ProxySet balancer://app_farm lbmethod=bytraffic
Using Headers
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName www.example.com
...
RequestHeader set Front-End-Https "On"
...
ProxyPass / balancer://app_farm lbmethod=byrequests maxattempts=3 \
nofailover=Off stickysession=SID
<Proxy balancer://app_farm>
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.1:8080 smax=15 max=50 lbfactor=2
...
</Proxy>
</VirtualHost>
Filtering Content
• mod_mime, e.g.
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml
• mod_filter
• mod_proxy_html
Using Compression
• We can use mod_deflate as usually:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
Offloading SSL
• Simply configure SSL on the frontend
server as you would do without a balancer
Caching
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.example.com
...
CacheEnable mem /
CacheEnable disk /
CacheDefaultExpire 1800
CacheMaxExpire 3600
...
ProxyPass / balancer://app_farm lbmethod=byrequests maxattempts=3 \
nofailover=Off stickysession=SID
<Proxy balancer://app_farm>
BalancerMember http://1.1.1.1:8080 smax=15 max=50 lbfactor=2
...
</Proxy>
</VirtualHost>
Failover
• Automatically done
• if a member is in-error the next one is
tried
• Can be switched off if backend servers do
not support session replication
Balancer Management
• Requires mod_status
• Allows for real-time monitoring
• Allows for dynamic updates of parameters
of balancer members
• enable/disable balancer members
• specify balance factors, methods, sets
Screenshot
Example Configuration
<Location /.balancer>
SetHandler balancer-manager
AuthType Digest
AuthName "Balancer Manager"
AuthDigestDomain /.balancer
AuthDigestProvider file
AuthUserFile /www/etc/httpd/balancer.passwd
Require user operations
</Location>
...
ProxyPass /.balancer !
ProxyPass / balancer://app_farm ...
Questions?
