[Off Topic] Software load balancing question

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Mike Christensen <mike@kitchenpc.com> wrote:

Hi guys, in my typical "ignore the rules when I have an audience of
smart techie people", I thought I'd poll the group about software load
balancing.  I know next to nothing about it, but I'm deploying my site
(built on Postgres 9.0 now!) within the next few days and at least
want a simple solution.

I'll be running a load balancer on a cheap, 256MB virtual server
instance running whatever flavor of Linux.  I want something super
simple to setup, but perhaps something with more advanced features if
I want to expand.  I don't really need sticky sessions, or SSL
support.  The site is new and won't have a huge load, I just want to
be "prepared" in case I get flooded unexpectedly.

Am I best off just using Apache with mod_proxy_balancer, or should I
check into solutions such as HAProxy or IPVS?  Anything else good out
there that people can recommend?

A friend of mine recommends Pound.

Another "nice to have" would be a solution where the load balancer
could serve up static resources such as jpg, png, js/css files, and
only forward dynamic page requests to a random web server.  However, I
might move those files to a CDN anyway, so not a huge deal.  Thanks!!
Sorry for being off-topic, I'll make up for it somehow.

Build a light apache server and use mod proxy to reverse proxy the dir
where your dynamic pages come from on a heavy server.
--
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.

On 10/04/10 5:51 PM, Scott Marlowe wrote:

Build a light apache server and use mod proxy to reverse proxy the dir
where your dynamic pages come from on a heavy server.

or even lighttp or nginx or similar on the front end server. These
servers are very suitable for serving lots of static content fast
without consuming much resources. save your heavy lifting machine for
the database server.

Thanks, Pound sounds pretty awesome - looks like it'll do exactly what
I need.. Thanks!

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Mike Christensen <mike@kitchenpc.com> wrote:

Hi guys, in my typical "ignore the rules when I have an audience of
smart techie people", I thought I'd poll the group about software load
balancing.  I know next to nothing about it, but I'm deploying my site

Some really heavy hit sites run Varnish as a reverse proxy/balancer.
It is designed from the ground up to run extremely high volumes.
There's also Apache TrafficServer which powers Yahoo! infrastructure.