mod_mem_cache on a proxy server

[François Beausoleil <fbeausoleil@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I have Apache used as a load balancer in front of a couple of Mongrels  
(ruby on rails application).  Reading the documentation for Apache, I  
was under the impression that the requests would not be forwarded to  
my Mongrels, but would stop at Apache, at least until the Expires time.

Here's a typical request / response (1st time):

> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.16.3 (powerpc-apple-darwin9.0) libcurl/7.16.3  
OpenSSL/0.9.7l zlib/1.2.3
> Host: xlsuite.com
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:01:01 GMT
< Server: Mongrel 1.1.4
< Last-Modified: Thu Apr 03 11:19:22 UTC 2008
< Status: 200 OK
< Cache-Control: public;max-age=300
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
< Content-Length: 4458
< Expires: Fri Jun 13 16:06:01 +0000 2008
< Set-Cookie: session_id=744e857c1fdb806acbfc7b803f67fa13; path=/
< Vary: Accept-Encoding

Redoing the same request still hits one of my mongrel.

If I use ab while tailing the mongrel logs, I see the requests.  My  
question is two-fold:

1. Have I configured this properly;
2. Should I use another caching provider ?

Having read a couple of messages on this list, I know mod_mem_cache  
might not be the best solution. This Apache is a software load  
balancer: it serves almost no static files.

Thanks for any help and have a nice day!
--
François Beausoleil
http://xlsuite.com/

# Apache 2.2 configuration file, on Ubuntu 7.04, stock Apache  
installation.

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName xlsuite.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/xlsuite/current/public

<Proxy *>
  Allow from all
</Proxy>

<Proxy balancer://xlsuite_hosted>
  BalancerMember http://192.168.1.1:2000
  BalancerMember http://192.168.1.2:2000
  # more defined here
</Proxy>

ProxyPass / balancer://xlsuite_hosted/
ProxyPassReverse / balancer://xlsuite_hosted
ProxyPreserveHost on
ProxyRequests Off

RewriteEngine On

# Redirect all non-static requests to cluster
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://xlsuite_hosted%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

# Deflate
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml  
application/xml application/xhtml+xml text/javascript text/css
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
</VirtualHost>

# mod_cache, mod_mem_cache configuration
CacheEnable mem /

# Specified in Kb.  1 Gb = 1024 * 1024 Kb
MCacheSize 1048576
# A prime number, because it's stored in a hash, and the hash needs to  
have space, yada, yada
MCacheMaxObjectCount 7919
# 48 bytes
MCacheMinObjectSize 48
# 4 Mb
MCacheMaxObjectSize 4194304
# 4 Mb
MCacheMaxStreamingBuffer 4194304

# Remove extraneous information from the response
ServerTokens Min
ProxyVia Off
ServerSignature Off

ExtendedStatus Off
ProxyStatus On

# == End of Apache config file
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