Re: Proxy questions - part 2 (Apache Users)

On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Charles W Buege <cbuege@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Now when someone from the outside world goes to 'www.mycompany.com' (which I presume via DNS matches the IP address of Physical Server 1), I'd like the proxy server to pass along the request to Physical Server 2.

Correct. This is my basic Virtual Host template adapted to your example (I tested it too):

ServerAdmin admin@xxxxxxxxxxx

DocumentRoot "/srv/www/sites/example.com/"

ServerName example.com

ServerAlias www.example.com

ErrorLog "logs/example.com_error.log"

CustomLog "logs/example.com_access.log" combined

ProxyPass / http://192.168.200.20/

ProxyPassReverse / http://192.168.200.20/

RewriteEngine On # if maintenance.html exists RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/maintenance.html -f # and the request is not for maintenance.html RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/maintenance\.html$ # redirect to maintenance.html RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /maintenance.html [L]

</VirtualHost>

I'd also like it to happen where if Physical Server 4's Apache instance is down for maintenance (backups, year end processing, etc.), that the Proxy Server (Physical Server 1) can display a message saying that the site is down for maintenance. I'm presuming this would be handled via the 'ErrorDocument 503' that you mentioned in your last e-mail, yes?

The 503 is best for unplanned outages since it does not show until the attempt to connect to the backend server times out.

I also presume that the DNS entries for www.mycompany.com, anothersite.mycompany.com, and thirdsite.mycompany.com would all have the same IP address and then the Proxy Server (Physical Server 1) would play 'traffic cop' and then forward the necessary traffic to the proper host behind the scenes.

Correct. And as in my example, I would put the IP addresses of the internal servers so they don't have to do DNS lookups.

Also if anyone wants to point me towards somewhere where I can learn more about this (web site, books, etc.) so I'm not cluttering up this mailing list with newbie questions, please feel free to point me that way.

This list is a perfectly reasonable place.

- Y