Apache: Creating A Session-Aware Loadbalancer Using mod_proxy_balancer (Debian Etch)

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme

Since Apache 2.1, a new module called mod_proxy_balancer is available which lets you turn a system that has Apache installed into a loadbalancer. This loadbalancer retrieves requested pages from two or more backend webservers and delivers them to the user's computer. Users get the impression that they deal with just one server (the loadbalancer) when in fact there are multiple systems behind the loadbalancer that process the users' requests. By using a loadbalancer, you can lower the load average on your webservers. One important feature of mod_proxy_balancer is that it can keep track of sessions which means that a single user always deals with the same backend webserver. Most websites are database-driven nowadays with user logins etc., and you'd get weird results if a user logs in on one backend webserver, and then his next request goes to another backend webserver, meaning he'd get logged out again. You can avoid this by using mod_proxy_balancer's session-awareness.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

 

1 Preliminary Note

It should be noted that a loadbalancer can lower the load on your backend webservers, but it doesn't provide high-availability (as long as you use only one loadbalancer)! A single loadbalancer is a single point of failure (SPOF). If you need high-availability, you should use at least two loadbalancers (e.g. one as a hot-standby).

I will use three servers in this example: one loadbalancer with the address www.example.com / example.com, and two backend servers with the addresses http1.example.com and http2.example.com.

All three servers use Debian Etch as their operating system, and all three systems have Debian's Apache2 installed (its version is 2.2.3, so it comes with mod_proxy_balancer by default). On http1.example.com and http2.example.com I have installed a database-driven web application: phpBB2, a famous forum software. Both phpBB2 installations are identical and use the same database. For debugging purposes, I've built-in a small difference in both installations: if the page is delivered by http1.example.com, it shows http1.example.com in the header:

And if it's delivered by http2.example.com, it shows http2.example.com:

That way I can control if sessions are handled correctly by mod_proxy_balancer. Of course, on a production system both pages would be the same.

Session-tracking is a bit tricky in mod_proxy_balancer because it expects a certain cookie format, and the name of the session variable can differ from application to application. Fortunately I've found this page: http://www.markround.com/archives/33-Apache-mod_proxy-balancing-with-PHP-sticky-sessions.html which has a great and easy solution for this problem that I'm going to use here.

 

2 Preparing The Backend Servers

First we must prepare our backend webservers http1.example.com and http2.example.com. We enable mod_rewrite like this:

http1.example.com / http2.example.com:

a2enmod rewrite
/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Then we open the Apache vhost configuration of our phpBB2 site on http1.example.com and add the following lines to it:

http1.example.com:

[...]
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [CO=BALANCEID:balancer.http1:.example.com]
[...]

(Make sure that you replace http1 and .example.com according to your needs!)

Restart Apache afterwards:

http1.example.com:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now we do the same on http2.example.com:

http2.example.com:

[...]
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [CO=BALANCEID:balancer.http2:.example.com]
[...]

(Make sure that you replace http2 and .example.com according to your needs!)

Restart Apache afterwards:

http2.example.com:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

That's all we have to configure on the backend servers.

 

3 Configuring The Loadbalancer

On our loadbalancer www.example.com we must enable a few Apache modules:

www.example.com:

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_balancer
a2enmod proxy_http
a2enmod status

and then restart Apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

I'm assuming that we don't run any other websites on the loadbalancer, so we can use Debian's default document root /var/www for our loadbalancer.

mod_proxy_balancer comes with a "Balancer Manager", a small web interface where you can tweak a few settings. We create the directory /var/www/balancer-manager for it which we password-protect so that only we have access to it:

mkdir /var/www/balancer-manager
htpasswd -c /var/.htpasswd admin

(You can replace admin with any username you like.) 

vi /var/www/balancer-manager/.htaccess
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Members Only"
AuthUserFile /var/.htpasswd
<limit GET PUT POST>
require valid-user
</limit>

Now we come to the vhost configuration of the loadbalancer. Apache's default vhost configuration on Debian Etch is located in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default, so we replace that with our own configuration:

cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/default_orig
cat /dev/null > /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
        ServerName www.example.com
        ServerAlias example.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/
        ProxyRequests Off

        <Proxy *>
          Order deny,allow
          Allow from all
        </Proxy>

        ProxyPass /balancer-manager !
        ProxyPass / balancer://mycluster/ stickysession=BALANCEID nofailover=On
        ProxyPassReverse / http://http1.example.com/
        ProxyPassReverse / http://http2.example.com/
        <Proxy balancer://mycluster>
          BalancerMember http://http1.example.com  route=http1
          BalancerMember http://http2.example.com  route=http2
          ProxySet lbmethod=byrequests
        </Proxy>

        <Location /balancer-manager>
          SetHandler balancer-manager

          Order deny,allow
          Allow from all
        </Location>
</VirtualHost>

It is very important that you set all slashes (/) EXACTLY as shown in this example, especially the trailing slashes!

Please make sure that the value of stickysession is the name of the cookie (BALANCEID) in our rewrite rules from chapter 2. Also, the values of route in the BalancerMember lines must be the respective value that we set in the rewrite rules (http1 or http2). The stickysession and route values take care of the correct session handling of mod_proxy_balancer.

It's also important that you have as many ProxyPassReverse lines as you have BalancerMember lines (one ProxyPassReverse line for each BalancerMember).

The ProxyPass /balancer-manager ! line makes sure that requests to www.example.com/balancer-manager aren't routed to the backend servers.

You can find more details about all settings and further fine-tuning options on http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_proxy.html#proxypass and http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_proxy_balancer.html.

Now that we've finished the configuration, we must restart Apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

 

4 Testing Our Setup

Our setup is now ready to be used. To test if sessions are handled correctly, I open two different browsers (because of the cookies), e.g. Firefox and Internet Explorer, and go to http://www.example.com or http://example.com. In both cases, you should see the phpBB2 forum, delivered by one of the backend servers (which you don't see, you should always have www.example.com or just example.com in the browser's address bar).

It's possible that the pages in both browsers are delivered by the same backend server - if that's the case, delete the cookies in your browsers or open another browser (Opera, Seamonkey, ...) and try again until you see that the pages in your two different browsers come from different backend servers (I can see it because I changed the header, as described in chapter 1). Then log in with two different users (e.g. falko and till) that you have created before and browse the forum with these two different users. In my case falko's content is always delivered by http1.example.com:

Whereas till's content comes from http2.example.com:

So sessions are handled correctly by mod_proxy_balancer!

 

5 The Balancer Manager

Direct your browser to http://www.example.com/balancer-manager or http://example.com/balancer-manager. You will be prompted for a username and password (the username and password you've created in chapter 3).

After the login you will see a simple web interface for managing the loadbalancer:

You can find an overview of possible configuration options on http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_proxy.html#proxypass.

 

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