:[drupal-support] Multiple HTTP Servers, one database?

[Boerland, Bert]

-----Original Message-----
From: drupal-support-bounces at drupal.org
[mailto:drupal-support-bounces at drupal.org]On Behalf Of Jochen Wiedmann
Sent: donderdag 6 oktober 2005 9:10

Hi

> sorry, if this may be a FAQ, but at least a search for "load
> balancing" or "cluster" on this list did not produce meaningful hits.

no it is not in the handbooks so good asking here. Yes, this is possible within drupal. Due to the fact that all sessionid's are stored in the database, the webserver(s) are stateless. so it is rather easy to do multiple frontends and one backe(cluser)server database. in fact, zattevrienden.be runs this way and I am sure that more high volume drupal sites do it this way. It is even possible to do it on DNS base instead with a expensive hardware loadbalancer. however, you wont devide the load, maybe share the load on the frontends

I made a picture fro drupal.org sometime ago for a propossed infrastructure setu , however my image module is br0ken in a bad way, so no url, i'm sorry. Drupal.org itself will run on multiple frontends with one backend server in due time (all stuff is installed, just not active). you just have to make sure that you have a common disk space for the configuration files of the webserver and static content like uploaded pictures. this can be a nfs share or a nas. 

you dont need special setups for drupal or apache, it will work, make a connection to 10.1.2.3 instead of 127.0.0.1 in the config file of drupaql, thats all. a cheap hardware loadbalancer (hint ebay) is prefered though. in case you go this way, please add your setup and experiences to drupal.org (either by a mailinglist or a posting), so we can add that to the handbook!