Using Apache for Proxy and Clustering Services on Debian 5 (Lenny)

The Apache HTTP server is a versatile and robust engine for providing access to resources over HTTP. With its modular design and standard configuration system, it is a popular and familiar option for systems administrators and architects who require a potentially diverse array of HTTP services, along with a stable and predictable administrative interface. In addition to simply serving content and facilitating the generation of dynamic content, the Apache HTTP server can be deployed as a front end server to manage clusters of web servers.

This guide provides a number of configuration examples and suggestions for using Apache as a front end server for other HTTP servers and clusters of servers. If you have not already installed Apache, consider our documentation on installing Apache before continuing with this guide. Additionally, consider our Setting Up and Securing a Compute Instance and beginner’s guide documents if you are new to Linode, and our administration basics guide if you are new to Linux server administration.

Case One: Separating Static Content from Dynamic Content

In this configuration, Apache provides two or more virtual hosts which perform different functions. Here we might configure our site to use static.example.com for hosting static resources for direct delivery like images, JavaScript, CSS files, media files, and static HTML, while using example.com to host dynamic content including CGI scripts and PHP pages. In this kind of system it becomes easy to move the static subdomain to another Linode instance or content delivery system without modifying any internal configuration.

To accomplish this, insert the following configuration directives into your virtual hosting configuration:

File: Apache Virtual Host Configuration

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<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@example.com ServerName static.example.com DocumentRoot /srv/www/static.example.com/public_html/ ErrorLog /srv/www/static.example.com/logs/error.log CustomLog /srv/www/static.example.com/logs/access.log combined </VirtualHost>

Create the necessary directories by issuing the following commands:

mkdir -p /srv/www/static.example.com/public_html/
mkdir -p /srv/www/static.example.com/logs/

Reload the web server configuration to create the virtual host. Issue the following command at this point and at any point after you’ve made changes to an Apache configuration file:

/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Now, place the static files in the /srv/www/static.example.com/public_html/ folder and ensure all static content is served from URLs that begin with http://static.example.com/. You must create an A Record that points to your Linode’s IP for the static.example.com domain. You can repeat and expand on this process by effectively creating a small cluster of independent servers that can serve separate components of a single website using sub-domains.

Case Two: Using ProxyPass to Delegate Services to Alternate Machines

In our guide to using multiple web servers with ProxyPass we outline a method for configuring multiple websites using Apache’s mod_proxy. Follow this guide, particularly the section regarding configuring mod_proxy and ensure that mod_proxy is active by issuing the following commands to enable and restart web server:

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_http
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Once mod_proxy is enabled and configured, you can insert the following directives into your virtual hosting configuration.

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ProxyPass /static/ http://static.example.com/ ProxyPass /media http://media.example.com ProxyPass /wiki/static/ ! ProxyPass /wiki/ http://application.example.com/

When added to the virtual host configuration for the example.com domain, these directives will have the following effects.

• All requests for resources located at http://example.com/static/ will be served by the server running at http://static.example.com. As a result, a request from the users perspective for http://example.com/static/screen.css will return the resource located at http://static.example.com/screen.css. Requests without a trailing slash (i.e. http://example.com/static) will not be passed to external server.
• All requests for resources located at /media and paths “below” this location will return resources located at http://media.example.com. This functions the same as the ProxyPass for static above, except it does not include the trailing slash for the domain name. Either form is acceptable, but both the local server address and the proxied URL must agree to ensure that the number of slashes is correct.
• Requests for http://example.com/wiki/static/ will not be passed to http://application.example.com/static/ and will be served or processed by the current virtual host in a manner described outside of the current excerpt. Use the ! directive instead of a URL to add an exception for a subdirectory of a directory that is to be proxy passed. Proxy exclusions must be declared before proxy passes.
• Requests for resources located below /wiki/ will be passed to the external server located at http://application.example.com/ in the conventional manner as described for /static/ and /media. Note that exclusions must be declared before proxy passes are declared.

In essence, the ProxyPass directive allows you to distribute serving HTTP resources amongst a larger pool of machines. At the same time, end users will still see a unified and coherent website hosted on a single domain.

Case Three: Proxy Only Some Requests to a Back End

While using ProxyPass directives allows you to distribute resources by directory amongst a collection of back-end servers, this kind of architecture only makes sense for some kinds of deployments. In many situations, administrators might like to have much more fine-grained control over the requests passed to external servers. In conjunction with mod_rewrite, we can configure mod_proxy to more flexibly pass requests to alternate back end servers. Follow this guide, particularly the section regarding configuring mod_proxy, and ensure that mod_proxy and mod_rewrite are active by issuing the following commands to enable and restart web server:

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_http
a2enmod rewrite
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Once mod_proxy is enabled and configured, ensure that the server is configured properly. Now, a number of additional proxy services will be available. Consider the following virtual host configuration:

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<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName example.com ServerAlias www.example.com DocumentRoot /srv/www/example.com/public_html/ ErrorLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/error.log CustomLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/access.log combined RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^/blog/(.*)\.php$ http://app.example.com/blog/$1.php [proxy] </VirtualHost>

In this example all requests for resources that end with .php are proxied to http://app.example.com/blog/. This would include requests for http://example.com/blog/index.php and http://example.com/blog/archive/index.php but not http://example.com/blog/screen.css or http://example.com/blog/ itself. All requests that do not end in .php will be served from resources located in the DocumentRoot. The [proxy] flags tell Apache that the rewritten URL should be passed to the Proxy module: this is equivalent to using the last directive as well. When a match is made, rewriting stops and the request is processed.

While this method of specifying resources for proxying is much more limited in some respects, it does allow you to very specifically control and distribute HTTP requests among a group of servers. Use the above example, and the others that follow, as inspiration when constructing the rewrite rules for your deployment:

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RewriteRule ^/(.*)\.js$ http://static.example.com/javascript/$1.js [proxy] RewriteRule ^/(.*)\.css$ http://static.example.com/styles/$1.css [proxy] RewriteRule ^/(.*)\.jpg$ http://static.example.com/images/$1.jpg [proxy] RewriteRule ^/blog/(.*)\.php$ http://app.example.com/wordpress/$1.php [proxy] RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ http://app.example.com/mediawiki/$1 [proxy]

In the first group we present three examples of requests for specific types of files that will be proxied to various directories in the http://static.example.com/ host. Note that the entire contents of the parenthetical (e.g. (.*) in this case) will be passed to the proxy host. If you do not capture the extension of a request in the regular expression, you must add it to the rewritten location. Using the first example, assuming these rewrite rules are in the example.com virtual host, a requests for http://example.com/toggle.js and http://example.com/blog/js/functions.js are passed to http://static.example.com/javascript/toggle.js and http://static.example.com/javascript/blog/js/functions.js respectively.

In the second group of examples, rather than passing the entire request back to a proxy, we choose to only pass a part of the request. In the first rule of this group, a request for http://example.com/blog/index.php would be served from http://app.example.com/wordpress/index.php however a request for http://example.com/wordpress/style.css would not be passed to app.example.com; indeed, given the earlier rules, this request would be passed to http://static.example.com/styles/wordpress/style.css. In the second rule in this example, every request for a resource that begins with http://example.com/wiki/ would be passed to http://app.example.com/mediawiki/. With this rewrite rule, both http://example.com/wiki/index.php and http://example.com/wiki/info/about.html would be rewritten as http://app.example.com/mediawiki/index.php and http://app.example.com/mediawiki/info/about.html.

In order to ensure that your rewrite rules function as predicted, keep in mind the following:

• If you use the extension to match the request and pass it to a specific backend server and the backend server expects files with extensions, you must add those extensions to the second part of the rewrite rule.
• When a rewrite rule with a proxy flag is used, and a request matches that rewrite rule, the request will be passed to mod_proxy even if a more precise rewrite rule matches further down in the configuration. Ensure that your rules are arranged such that less specific rewrite rules are declared after more precise ones to avoid unintentional conflicts.

Case Four: Forward All Non-Static Content to an External Server

Using mod_rewrite to direct requests to proxied resources gives administrators a great deal of power and fine grained control over where and how requests are passed to the back end servers. At the same time, it can add a great deal of complexity to the configuration of the web-server that may be difficult to manage. Minor updates and small changes to configuration can have large and unintended impacts on the function of a website. For this reason it is always crucial that you fully test your configuration before the initial deployment or before you deploy any updates.

The following case presents a more streamlined and simple proxy and rewrite example. Consider the following configuration directives:

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<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName example.com ServerAlias www.example.com DocumentRoot /srv/www/example.com/public_html/ ErrorLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/error.log CustomLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/access.log combined RewriteEngine On RewriteCond /srv/www/example.com/public_html%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://app.example.com/$1 [proxy] </VirtualHost>

In this example, the RewriteCond controls the behavior of the RewriteEngine so that requests for resources will only be passed to the proxied server (e.g. http://app.example.com/) if there is no file in the /srv/www/example.com/public_html/ directory that matches the request. All other requests are passed to http://app.example.com/. This kind of configuration is quite useful in situations where your deployment’s dynamic content is powered by an application specific HTTP server, but also requires static content that can be more efficiently served directly from Apache.

Case Five: Deploy an Apache Proxy Cluster

All of the previous cases presented in this document outline configurations for using mod_proxy in various configurations to make it possible to use your Apache HTTP server as a front end for a more complex architecture. This case takes this one step further, by allowing Apache to proxy requests to a group of identical backend servers, and thus be able to handle a much larger load. Issue the following commands to enable the required modules and then restart the server:

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_http
a2enmod proxy_balancer
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Edit the /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy.conf file as described in this documentation. Do not forget to reload the configuration Apache again once you have fully configured your virtual host and cluster. Consider the following Apache configuration directives:

File: Apache Virtual Host Configuration

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<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName example.com ServerAlias www.example.com ErrorLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/error.log CustomLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/access.log combined <Proxy balancer://cluster> BalancerMember http://app1.example.com BalancerMember http://app2.example.com BalancerMember http://app3.example.com BalancerMember http://app4.example.com BalancerMember http://app5.example.com </Proxy> ProxyPass / balancer://cluster/ # ProxyPass / balancer://cluster/ lbmethod=byrequests # ProxyPass / balancer://cluster/ lbmethod=bytraffic # ProxyPass / balancer://cluster/ lbmethod=bybusyness </VirtualHost>

In this case we establish a cluster of services, running on hosts named app1.example.com through app5.example.com. You can specify any host name or IP and port combination when creating the initial cluster. The BalancerMember directive also takes all of the arguments of the ProxyPass directive which allow you to customize and limit the behavior of each cluster component. Variables like min=, max=, and Max= allow you to control “minimum” and “maximum” limits for sessions as well as “soft maximum” which sets a soft maximum after which additional connections will be subject to a time to live. Once the cluster is established simply use the ProxyPass directive as described in earlier cases to pass requests to the cluster.

The lbmethod= argument to the ProxyPass directive controls the method by which Apache distributes requests to the back end server. There are three options displayed in commented lines (e.g. beginning with hash marks, #). The first, lbmethod=byrequests is the default and equivalent to not specifying a lbmethod= argument. byrequests distributes requests, so that each backend server receives the same number of requests or the configured share of the requests. By contrast the bytraffic and bybusyness methods attempt to distribute the traffic between different cluster elements by assessing the amount of actual traffic and load, respectively, on each backend. Test each method your deployment to ensure that you select the most useful load balancer method.

Apache also contains a “Balancer Manager” interface that you can use to first issue the following command to ensure that Apache’s mod_status is enabled, and restart the server if needed:

a2enmod status
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now include the following location directive in the virtual host where your cluster is configured:

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<Location /balancer-manager> SetHandler balancer-manager Order Deny,Allow Deny from all Allow from 192.168.1.233 </Location>

Modify the Allow from directive to allow access only from your current local machine’s IP address, and read more about rule-based access control. Now visit /balancer-manager of the domain of your virtual host (e.g. example.com,) in our example http://example.com/balancer-manager to use Apache’s tools for managing your cluster. Ensure that the /balancer-manager location is not established at a location that is to be passed to a proxied server. Congratulations, you are now able to configure a fully functional cluster of web servers using the Apache web server as a front end!

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Official Apache Documentation for Proxy Pass
• Official Apache Documentation for Proxy Balancer
• Configure ProxyPass and Multiple Web Servers with Apache