From: Justin MacCarthy (macarthy at domain iol.ie)
Date: Fri 06 Sep 2002 - 14:08:18 IST
>
> Unfortunately there is some session level stuff on the sites, so user
> sessions would have to stay with the server they started with.
>
Even though there are several solutions both hardware and software most have
the concept of sticky sessions so that the users use the same server. In
addition ssl is usually handled this way too, so the SSL session only has
to be initiated once
You can set them up several ways to handle traffic.
Simple -> roundrobin or more advanced using agents on the web server to
report load etc...
There usually is some "code level" work to be done on websites that are
hosted on a cluster. For example, often session information is stored in a
db with the session key so it available from both servers....
By the way it would be possible to use url re-writing to make sure the
seesions return to same box.
One other issue to mention is admin, making sure that the code base is
sync'ed on both boxes can be a pain in the arse. Same with certs etc...
We use Cisco Localdirector hardware which is far from free..
Justin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Thu 06 Feb 2003 - 13:18:42 GMT