I'm looking for a bit of direction on a few issues related to mod_proxy and the Apache 2.X series.
Currently I'm in charge of Apache on a large website running 1.3.26 apache. Over the past few years the department has had a proliferation of technologies for back end servers. I have been using mod_proxy to manage connectivity to all of the servers in question. Unfortunately in the last year our server has had issues handling the load restraints and buggy application servers. To alleviate the immediate issues I made customized changes to the 1.3.26 Apache mod_proxy to handle various timeout conditions and real time monitoring. We also have been given the funding to deploy a robust front end web server machine (An IBM blade center). Given the magnitude of the migration to the new machine, I was given the go ahead to investigate Apache 2.X as a better solution for the front end web server. Notably of importance to us was the fact that a proxy timeout directive was built into 2.X, and we would not need to worry about the custom code. The load balancing failover that is being talked about will also be of significant interest to us as it becomes available. I have run into three issues, however. 1) SSL proxying. Due to security policies, we have a number of back end app servers that require SSL from the client to the server. Therefore SSL based proxying is a requirement. I have never seen a definitive statement as to whether SSL proxying is supported, but I've seen indications it is not, and confirmed in my tests that it did not work. Is there any plans to implement this feature? 2) Timeout Directive. I tried using this with the test suite that I used for my mod_proxy changes, and did not get the intended results. For example, I wrote a cgi that wais 30 seconds before passing back a response, and set the timeout to 10 seconds. On my version the proxy would give up after 10 seconds of no data transfer. This did not happen with the 2.X timeout. Can someone give a better explanation of what this timeout handles and whether I possibly made a configuration mistake. 3) Monitoring. My proxy changes wrote out a customize log entry upon failure. I then wrote a program which analyzed this log in real time and sent out warnings on configurable intervals when configurable thresholds were breached. Assuming I can get 1 and 2 sorted out, I'd be willing to work on this third item as an enhancement to mod_proxy. Thanks Jeffrey Burgoyne Chief Technology Architect KCSI Keenuh Consulting Services Inc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
