mod_proxy_balancer

["Nathan Wiebe" <nwiebe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, I've got a mod_proxy_balancer setup in front of a Ruby on Rails application.  I've got four back end processes with Apache in front.  This is all setup and working, requests are distributed across the back end processes.

Some of the processing on the back end servers takes a long time, up to five minutes.  Others requests are handled very quickly.

Is there any way to tell mod_proxy_balancer not to send a request to a back end process if it still hasn't returned from the previous request?  Right now when the first back end is processing one of the large requests, and the other three back ends have processed their own requests in turn, the first is selected again to handle the next request, even thought it's still busy.  After this happens, all future requests block until the first is done processing its long running request.

Can I tell Apache to skip back ends that are still processing a request?

Nathan Wiebe