Load Balancers - 2

Last post was about using NGINX as the load balancer, this post is about using apache http server as a load balancer.  Lets get started with apache ( My favorite).


APACHE HTTP Server

Apache http server needs no introduction,  its like the backbone of www. According to wikipedia :

The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache (/əˈpætʃiː/ ə-pa-chee), is a web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web.^[3] In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone.

Post intro now lets install and configure it.

Installation :

You can download apache http server from apache download site http://httpd.apache.org/ 
On linux you can install the package using :

sudo apt-get install apache2

Configure :

Apache provides modules to use it as a load balancer but by default they are not enabled, so first step is to enable load balancer modules and proxy modules. Lets enable them 

1. Enable Modules

• sudo a2enmod proxy_balancer
• sudo a2enmod proxy_connect
• sudo a2enmod proxy_http

2. Restart apache 

• sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

3. Now we need to configure one virtual host. Lets take the last post example where we had    two app servers 192.186.1.2 and 192.168.1.3 and we have load balancer machine 192.168.1.1
We will direct the load from load balancer to app servers. Create one new file  /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/my_load_balancer and enter :


Listen 80
NameVirtualHost 192.168.1.1:80
<VirtualHost 192.168.1.1:80>
        ProxyRequests off
        ServerName 192.168.1.1
        ProxyPreserveHost On

        <Proxy balancer://my_app_servers>
                Balancermember http://192.168.1.2:80 loadfactor=1
                BalancerMember http://192.168.1.3:80 loadfactor=2
                #Order deny, allow
                Allow from all
                ProxySet lbmethod=byrequests
        </Proxy>

        <Location /balancer-manager>
                SetHandler balancer-manager
                Order deny,allow
                Allow from all
        </Location>
        ProxyPass /balancer-manager !
        ProxyPass / balancer://my_app_servers/
</VirtualHost>

Here we are creating a virtual host which is listening on port 80.


4. Restart apache.

• sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Note : You need to comment out the default NameVirtualHost (/etc/apache2/ports.conf) in case you are configuring your load balancer to listen on port 80.

Discuss : 

So as you can see here we mention the backend servers using Balancermember and can configure how much load should be directed to that member using loadfactor. And you can also configure which algorithm you can use to distribute the load using lbmethod. These settings are the bare minimum to start your load balancer.

If you want to know what all options are available with proxy module please check this http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/ as there are many options and its not possible to discuss all of them here.

Problems with apache :

Only problem with apache is when you increase the load its performance starts degrading, in my case I had decent load and it was performing well under 5000 requests in an hour.