# Hardware loadbalancer + apache 2.2. proxy + mongrels

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [December 8, 2006, 1:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770 "2006-12-08T13:00:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phillipoertel)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2006, 1:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770/1 "2006-12-08T13:00:36Z")

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hi,

we’re currently planning the deployment of a new rails application.  
everything will be behind a hardware load balancer (existing  
infrastructure). now the question is which setup to use:

1. hardware load balancer talks to (one or more) apache 2.2 with  
mod\_proxy balancer, each talks to many mongrel processes.  
that would give us all of apache’s features to use.  
disadvantage: we wonder if the load-balancer behind load-balancer setup  
would be a good idea?

2. have the hardware load-balancer talk to the mongrels directly.  
disadvantage: there’s no full blown web server to do some configs that  
you don’t want to handle in rails (mod\_rewrite, mod\_access\_xxx, etc.  
etc.)

does anyone have experience with one of the setups above? we’d be very  
happy if we could learn from that.

cheers,  
phillip

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**Author:** ![phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phillipoertel)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2006, 2:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770/2 "2006-12-08T14:36:38Z")

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Option 1 should work fine as long as you maintain session state in the  
DB or via some other machine-independent means (which you are probably  
already doing if you are using multiple mongrel processes).

V/r  
Anthony E.

On 12/8/06, Phillip O. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> disadvantage: we wonder if the load-balancer behind load-balancer setup  
> cheers,  
> phillip
> 
> –  
> Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).
> 
> >

–  
Cell: 808 782-5046  
Current Location: Melbourne, FL

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**Author:** ![phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phillipoertel)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2006, 4:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770/3 "2006-12-08T16:14:04Z")

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Anthony E. wrote:

> Option 1 should work fine as long as you maintain session state in the  
> DB or via some other machine-independent means (which you are probably  
> already doing if you are using multiple mongrel processes).

yes, sessions will be held in a storage which al mongrels will share.

we’re reluctant to go with option 1, as the hw load balancer will not  
“see” the mongrel instances which it has to balance, so it doesn’t get  
direct feedback. so we _suspect_ the total throughput would be lower. of  
course the obvious thing would be to configure both setups and measure,  
but i was hoping someone already has the experience.

thanks,  
phil

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**Author:** ![phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phillipoertel)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2006, 3:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770/4 "2006-12-09T03:30:47Z")

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On Dec 8, 2006, at 7:14 AM, Phillip O. wrote:

> we’re reluctant to go with option 1, as the hw load balancer will not  
> “see” the mongrel instances which it has to balance, so it doesn’t get  
> direct feedback. so we _suspect_ the total throughput would be  
> lower. of  
> course the obvious thing would be to configure both setups and  
> measure,  
> but i was hoping someone already has the experience.
> 
> thanks,  
> phil

Hey Phil-

```
We are doing pretty much number 1 except with nginx instead of

```

apache. Our setup is like this:

hardware load balancers -\> nginx on each node -\> mongrel\_cluster.

```
This works superbly. Unless there is some specific feature of apache

```

that you have to have though I recommend using nginx instead of  
apache2.2 nginx proxy module is much faster then mod\_proxy\_balancer.  
Also nginx uses almost no resources, compared to apache which does  
use resources heavily. We have close to 100 nodes setup exactly like  
this and have had very good results from it.

```
We did experiments with going directly to mongrel from the load

```

balancers but the performance difference was minimal. ANd nginx  
serves static files very fast , much faster then plain mongrel.  
Overall its a performance win to use nginx in front of mongrel  
instead of straight to mongrel because static files are served many  
times faster. You really don’t want mongrel serving any static files  
if possible.

Cheers-  
– Ezra Z.  
– Lead Rails Evangelist  
– removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
– Engine Y., Serious Rails Hosting  
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)

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**Author:** ![phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phillipoertel)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2006, 4:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770/5 "2006-12-09T04:34:49Z")

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On 12/8/06, Phillip O. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> 1. hardware load balancer talks to (one or more) apache 2.2 with  
> mod\_proxy balancer, each talks to many mongrel processes.  
> that would give us all of apache’s features to use.  
> disadvantage: we wonder if the load-balancer behind load-balancer setup  
> would be a good idea?

We ([http://pivotalsf.com](http://pivotalsf.com)) have a client/project that uses an f5 load  
balancer to spread load across three web/app servers running apache  
2.2 backed by a mongrel cluster (mysql and solr on separate hosts).  
This works great. Our only (minor) problems with this have been with  
the lb’s config properly detecting 503s from apache. I highly  
recommend apache for this.

Hope this helps,

## pt.

Parker T.

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510.541.0125

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**Author:** ![phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phillipoertel)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2006, 10:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770/6 "2006-12-09T10:29:48Z")

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hi ezra, hi parker,

thank you very much for sharing your setups and the reasoning behind it!  
it’s good to know that both setups i suggested can work well 🙂

i found an article by rob orsini where he addresses the mongrel static  
file “problem” by handing static requests directly to lighty.  
[http://blog.tupleshop.com/2006/7/8/deploying-rails-with-pound-in-front-of-mongrel-lighttpd-and-apache](http://blog.tupleshop.com/2006/7/8/deploying-rails-with-pound-in-front-of-mongrel-lighttpd-and-apache)  
now one could adapt that for use with a hw lb as follows:  
every app server runs a couple of mongrels and one lighty. the hw lb  
hands dynamic requests to the mongrels, static ones to lighty.  
no idea if this works, but it would remove the additional nginx proxying  
from the equation. otoh, it would make the hw lb rules more complicated.

cheers,  
phillip

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**Author:** ![phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phillipoertel)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2006, 11:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770/7 "2006-12-09T11:03:09Z")

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On 12/8/06, Ezra Z. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> hardware load balancers → nginx on each node → mongrel\_cluster.

Another option would be:

hardware load balancers → litespeed(s)

I may be in the minority with that suggestion – however my experience  
with Litespeed has been very rewarding. Haven’t figured out why it  
doesn’t come up more often.

Joe

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**Author:** ![phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@phillipoertel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/phillipoertel)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2006, 11:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hardware-loadbalancer-apache-2-2-proxy-mongrels/78770/8 "2006-12-09T11:16:24Z")

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Joe N. wrote:

> On 12/8/06, Ezra Z. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:
> 
> > hardware load balancers → nginx on each node → mongrel\_cluster.
> 
> Another option would be:
> 
> hardware load balancers → litespeed(s)

good point, thanks for reminding me.

> I may be in the minority with that suggestion – however my experience  
> with Litespeed has been very rewarding. Haven’t figured out why it  
> doesn’t come up more often.  
> i think the fact that it’s a commercial solution gives it less exposure  
> (i.e. coverage) in the rails community - where very good open source  
> solutions exist. that’s not to say that it wouldn’t be a good choice.

cheers,  
phillip