Mailing List Archive

On Feb 3, 2004, at 6:39 PM, James Atkinson wrote:
> The information on the backhand website is a tad short on details, so
> I've got a question before I start my implementation.
>
> Basically what I want to know is, does mod_backhand work as an HTTP
> proxy? Can I set something up like this:
>
> I have a website called www.test.com.
> www.test.com has the IP of 62.255.28.38
>
> When someone hits www.test.com it comes through a Cisco PIX and
> redirects to a DMZ address of 172.16.22.1, this is the primary server
> for www.test.com
>
> Can I setup a machine, www2.test.com on 172.16.22.2 but never give it
> an
> external IP address?. Thus www.test.com will proxy requests as needed
> to
> www2.test.com without the end user ever seeing anything?
>
> From there, over time, load 3 more backhand-ed servers into the DMZ
> without ever having to expose more machines to the internet..
>
> This is the impression I got from the website but I'm not 100% sure. Am
> I way off? Does every machine need to have it's own internet routeable
> IP?

You are correct. You don't need all of them to be publicly accessible.
One machine can be the "front-end" for an entire cluster.

// Theo Schlossnagle
// Principal Engineer -- http://www.omniti.com/~jesus/
// Postal Engine -- http://www.postalengine.com/
// Ecelerity: fastest MTA on earth

I'm pretty sure you can do that. I just installed apache and
mod_backhand to try it out at work on two separate machines. One machine
had an alias in DNS (say www3.website.com for example) and it would
alternate between the machine that was actually aliased as www3 and the
other backhanded machine that communicates to www3.

Just to maybe try and clarify a bit better... You have, say, three
machines: one called machine1.website.com, another called
machine2.website.com, and another called machine3.website.com

The three machines are installed with backhand and communicate through
port 4445 and possibly share a webdir nfs mount so they show all the
same html/php files.

machine1 has an alias www. So when anyone goes to www.website.com it
will look at machine1 since that's it'a alias, mod_backhand then works
away and does it's deciding by the 'Backhand' directives in the
http.conf file on each machine, deciding on which machine to serve the
page(s).

I'm pretty sure your setup will work. I do remember reading somewhere
off of google about proxies working with backhand but I haven't used a
proxy at work for a web server so I don't know for sure.

hope this helps, if at all...

craig.

James Atkinson wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>The information on the backhand website is a tad short on details, so
>I've got a question before I start my implementation.
>
>Basically what I want to know is, does mod_backhand work as an HTTP
>proxy? Can I set something up like this:
>
>I have a website called www.test.com.
>www.test.com has the IP of 62.255.28.38
>
>When someone hits www.test.com it comes through a Cisco PIX and
>redirects to a DMZ address of 172.16.22.1, this is the primary server
>for www.test.com
>
>Can I setup a machine, www2.test.com on 172.16.22.2 but never give it an
>external IP address?. Thus www.test.com will proxy requests as needed to
>www2.test.com without the end user ever seeing anything?
>
>>From there, over time, load 3 more backhand-ed servers into the DMZ
>without ever having to expose more machines to the internet..
>
>This is the impression I got from the website but I'm not 100% sure. Am
>I way off? Does every machine need to have it's own internet routeable
>IP?
>
>
>Thanks.
>
>
>