Load balancing with mod_cluster

mod_cluster is an HTTP-based load balancer that can be used to forward a request to a set of application server instances. Compared to legacy balancing solutions balancing solutions such as mod_jk or mod_proxy, mod_cluster provides the following benefits:

  • Dynamic balancing configuration
  • Pluggable server-side balancing metrics

As far as the first point is concerned, a load balancer is commonly based on a static list of servers where requests are directed. In many cases this can be a limiting factor especially when server nodes can be varied at runtime; besides this, maintaining a static list of servers is error-prone and needs to reshaped every time there is a change in your network.

About the next point, mod_cluster ...

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