path: root/docs/manual/mod/mod_proxy_balancer.xml

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<modulesynopsis metafile="mod_proxy_balancer.xml.meta">

<name>mod_proxy_balancer</name>
<description><module>mod_proxy</module> extension for load balancing </description>
<status>Extension</status>
<sourcefile>proxy_balancer.c</sourcefile>
<identifier>proxy_balancer_module</identifier>
<compatibility>Available in version 2.1 and later</compatibility>

<summary>
    <p>This module <em>requires</em> the service of <module
    >mod_proxy</module>. It provides load balancing support for
    <code>HTTP</code>, <code>FTP</code> and <code>AJP13</code> protocols
    </p>

    <p>Thus, in order to get the ability of load balancing,
    <module>mod_proxy</module> and <module>mod_proxy_balancer</module>
    have to be present in the server.</p>

    <note type="warning"><title>Warning</title>
      <p>Do not enable proxying until you have <a
      href="mod_proxy.html#access">secured your server</a>. Open proxy
      servers are dangerous both to your network and to the Internet at
      large.</p>
    </note>
</summary>
<seealso><module>mod_proxy</module></seealso>

<section id="scheduler">
    <title>Load balancer scheduler algorithm</title>
    <p>At present, there are 2 load balancer scheduler algorithms available
    for use: Request Counting and Weighted Traffic Counting. These are controlled
    via the <code>lbmethod</code> value of the Balancer definition. See
    the <directive module="mod_proxy">Proxy</directive> directive for
    more information.</p>

</section>

<section id="requests">
    <title>Request Counting Algorithm</title>
    <p>Enabled via <code>lbmethod=byrequests</code>, the idea behind this
    scheduler is that we distribute the requests among the
    various workers to ensure that each gets their configured share
    of the number of requests. It works as follows:</p>

    <p><dfn>lbfactor</dfn> is <em>how much we expect this worker
    to work</em>, or <em>the workers's work quota</em>. This is
    a normalized value representing their "share" of the amount of
    work to be done.</p>

    <p><dfn>lbstatus</dfn> is <em>how urgent this worker has to work
    to fulfill its quota of work</em>.</p>

    <p>The <dfn>worker</dfn> is a member of the load balancer,
    usually a remote host serving one of the supported protocols.</p>

    <p>We distribute each worker's work quota to the worker, and then look
    which of them needs to work most urgently (biggest lbstatus).  This
    worker is then selected for work, and its lbstatus reduced by the
    total work quota we distributed to all workers.  Thus the sum of all
    lbstatus does not change(*) and we distribute the requests
    as desired.</p>

    <p>If some workers are disabled, the others will
    still be scheduled correctly.</p>

    <example><pre><code>for each worker in workers
    worker lbstatus += worker lbfactor
    total factor    += worker lbfactor
    if worker lbstatus > candidate lbstatus
        candidate = worker

candidate lbstatus -= total factor</code></pre>
    </example>

    <p>If a balancer is configured as follows:</p>
    
    <table style="data">
    <tr><th>worker</th>
        <th>a</th>
        <th>b</th>
        <th>c</th>
        <th>d</th></tr>
    <tr><th>lbfactor</th>
        <td>25</td>
        <td>25</td>
        <td>25</td>
        <td>25</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td>0</td>
        <td>0</td>
        <td>0</td>
        <td>0</td></tr>
    </table>

    <p>And <var>b</var> gets disabled, the following schedule is produced:</p>

    <table style="data">
    <tr><th>worker</th>
        <th>a</th>
        <th>b</th>
        <th>c</th>
        <th>d</th></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td><em>-50</em></td>
        <td>0</td>
        <td>25</td>
        <td>25</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td>-25</td>
        <td>0</td>
        <td><em>-25</em></td>
        <td>50</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td>0</td>
        <td>0</td>
        <td>0</td>
        <td><em>0</em></td></tr>
    <tr><td colspan="5">(repeat)</td></tr>
    </table>

    <p>That is it schedules: <var>a</var> <var>c</var> <var>d</var>
    <var>a</var> <var>c</var> <var>d</var> <var>a</var> <var>c</var>
    <var>d</var> ... Please note that:</p>

    <table style="data">
    <tr><th>worker</th>
        <th>a</th>
        <th>b</th>
        <th>c</th>
        <th>d</th></tr>
    <tr><th>lbfactor</th>
        <td>25</td>
        <td>25</td>
        <td>25</td>
        <td>25</td></tr>
    </table>

    <p>Has the exact same behavior as:</p>

    <table style="data">
    <tr><th>worker</th>
        <th>a</th>
        <th>b</th>
        <th>c</th>
        <th>d</th></tr>
    <tr><th>lbfactor</th>
        <td>1</td>
        <td>1</td>
        <td>1</td>
        <td>1</td></tr>
    </table>

    <p>This is because all values of <dfn>lbfactor</dfn> are normalized
    with respect to the others. For:</p>

    <table style="data">
    <tr><th>worker</th>
        <th>a</th>
        <th>b</th>
        <th>c</th></tr>
    <tr><th>lbfactor</th>
        <td>1</td>
        <td>4</td>
        <td>1</td></tr>
    </table>

    <p>worker <var>b</var> will, on average, get 4 times the requests
    that <var>a</var> and <var>c</var> will.</p>

    <p>The following asymmetric configuration works as one would expect:</p>

    <table style="data">
    <tr><th>worker</th>
        <th>a</th>
        <th>b</th></tr>
    <tr><th>lbfactor</th>
        <td>70</td>
        <td>30</td></tr>
    <tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td><em>-30</em></td>
        <td>30</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td>40</td>
        <td><em>-40</em></td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td><em>10</em></td>
        <td>-10</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td><em>-20</em></td>
        <td>20</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td><em>-50</em></td>
        <td>50</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td>20</td>
        <td><em>-20</em></td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td><em>-10</em></td>
        <td>10</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td><em>-40</em></td>
        <td>40</td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td>30</td>
        <td><em>-30</em></td></tr>
    <tr><th>lbstatus</th>
        <td><em>0</em></td>
        <td>0</td></tr>
    <tr><td colspan="3">(repeat)</td></tr>
    </table>

    <p>That is after 10 schedules, the schedule repeats and 7 <var>a</var>
    are selected with 3 <var>b</var> interspersed.</p>
</section>

<section id="traffic">
    <title>Weighted Traffic Counting Algorithm</title>
    <p>Enabled via <code>lbmethod=bytraffic</code>, the idea behind this
    scheduler is very similar to the Request Counting method, with
    the following changes:</p>

    <p><dfn>lbfactor</dfn> is <em>how much traffic, in bytes, we want
    this worker to handle</em>. This is also a normalized value
    representing their "share" of the amount of work to be done,
    but instead of simply counting the number of requests, we take
    into account the amount of traffic this worker has seen.</p>

    <p>If a balancer is configured as follows:</p>
    
    <table style="data">
    <tr><th>worker</th>
        <th>a</th>
        <th>b</th>
        <th>c</th></tr>
    <tr><th>lbfactor</th>
        <td>1</td>
        <td>2</td>
        <td>1</td></tr>
    </table>

    <p>Then we mean that we want <var>b</var> to process twice the
    amount of bytes than <var>a</var> or <var>c</var> should. It does
    not necessarily mean that <var>b</var> would handle twice as
    many requests, but it would process twice the I/O. Thus, the
    size of the request and response are applied to the weighting
    and selection algorithm.</p>

</section>

<section id="environment">
    <title>Exported Environment Variables</title>
    <p>At present there are 5 environment variables exported:</p>
    
    <!-- ============= BALANCER_SESSION_STICKY =============== -->
    <dt><var><a name="balancer_session_sticky" id="balancer_session_sticky">BALANCER_SESSION_STICKY</a></var></dt>
    <dd>
    <p>This is assigned the <var>stickysession</var> value used in the current
    request.  It is the cookie or parameter name used for sticky sessions</p>
    </dd>

    <!-- ============= BALANCER_SESSION_ROUTE ================ -->
    <dt><var><a name="balancer_session_route" id="balancer_session_route">BALANCER_SESSION_ROUTE</a></var></dt>
    <dd>
    <p>This is assigned the <var>route</var> parsed from the current 
    request.</p>
    </dd>

    <!-- ============= BALANCER_NAME ========================= -->
    <dt><var><a name="balancer_name" id="balancer_name">BALANCER_NAME</a></var></dt>
    <dd>
    <p>This is assigned the name of the balancer used for the current 
    request. The value is something like <code>balancer://foo</code>.</p>
    </dd>

    <!-- ============= BALANCER_WORKER_NAME ================== -->
    <dt><var><a name="balancer_worker_name" id="balancer_worker_name">BALANCER_WORKER_NAME</a></var></dt>
    <dd>
    <p>This is assigned the name of the worker used for the current request.
    The value is something like <code>http://hostA:1234</code>.</p>
    </dd>

    <!-- ============= BALANCER_WORKER_ROUTE ================= -->
    <dt><var><a name="balancer_worker_route" id="balancer_worker_route">BALANCER_WORKER_ROUTE</a></var></dt>
    <dd>
    <p>This is assigned the <var>route</var> of the worker that will be 
    used for the current request.</p>
    </dd>

</section>

<section id="enable">
    <title>Enabling Balancer Manager Support</title>
    <p>This module <em>requires</em> the service of 
    <module>mod_status</module>.
    Balancer manager enables dynamic update of balancer
    members. You can use balancer manager to change the balance
    factor or a particular member, or put it in the off line
    mode.
    </p>

    <p>Thus, in order to get the ability of load balancer management,
    <module>mod_status</module> and <module>mod_proxy_balancer</module>
    have to be present in the server.</p>

    <p>To enable load balancer management for browsers from the foo.com
    domain add this code to your <code>httpd.conf</code>
    configuration file</p>
<example>
    &lt;Location /balancer-manager&gt;<br />
    SetHandler balancer-manager<br />
<br />
    Order Deny,Allow<br />
    Deny from all<br />
    Allow from .foo.com<br />
    &lt;/Location&gt;
</example>

    <p>You can now access load balancer manager by using a Web browser
    to access the page
    <code>http://your.server.name/balancer-manager</code></p>
</section>

</modulesynopsis>