[ic] Cluster and/or load balancing question

[interchange-users@icdevgroup.org (Dan Browning)]

At 08:46 AM 7/11/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 07:20:46AM -0400, Bill Carr wrote:
> > On Thu, 2002-07-11 at 04:19, Joachim Leidinger wrote:
> > > Hi List,
> > >
> > >
> > > I've searched for any answer in the mail archivs to get a right
> > > using/installation/configuration of IC with 2 servers as a cluster and
> > > later with a load balancing solution. But I'm unsure about the right way
> > > to the solution.
> > >
>
>...
> >
> > I use a LVS-DR setup like this:
> >
> >           Internet
> >              |
> >         ----------
> >         | LVS-DR |
> >         ----------
> >              |
> >       ----------------
> >       |              |
> > ------------    ------------
> > | www/ic 1 |    | www/ic 2 |
> > ------------    ------------
> >       |              |
> >       ----------------
> >              |
> >         ---------------------
> >         | MySQL/NFS Server  |
> >         ---------------------
> >
> > I would start with this and once you get something like this working
> > consider load balancing or replicating your database. You will have a
> > single point of failure in your database server so through your best and
> > most sturdy hardware at it.
> >
> > Please go for it and become an expert. I think that there is only myself
> > and Dan Browning that run any kind of rig like this now.
> >
>
>I'm curious as to what level of activity justifies load balancing?
>Or are you doing it just for redundancy?

For us, the nature of the application required a lot of processing power 
per user, but it would have been done anyway for the redundancy (or reduced 
failure percentages anyway).

>I'd think NFS would cost you more performance in the above setup than it
>would be worth vs more beef for handling session files.

We use MySQL for sessions, and it seems really fast.

>One might also consider separating www/ic into two machines.  We don't
>use apache on our vanilla sites; where we do, it's a mod_perl, mod_ssl,
>mod_rewrite behemoth with all the bells and whistles
>and that really hammers a machine compared to WN or Roxen.  A straight
>version might be a lot easier on the machine, I'd guess.  We've found
>separating those mod_* apaches from ic makes a huge difference.  YMMV.
>
>
>cfm

Yes, I agree.  There has also been a lot of work done in 4.9 to reduce 
memory footprint (including Mike Heins' great tag breakout as well as Jon 
Jensen's mod_perl integration).  Separating out IC, http, and db are always 
good measures for performance improvement, however.

+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Dan Browning, Kavod Technologies <db@kavod.com>
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~