Background:

Load balancing is a powerful tool that allows multiple simple computers to be merged or clustered together into a fault tolerant super computer. We have been using balance, stunnel and a custom virtual host script running on Suse Linux to do our load balancing and SSL encryption. We made a decision in late November to start testing Ubuntu server as replacement for Suse Linux. Our tests over the last six weeks showed that Ubuntu server was a good replacement for Suse Linux.

Onfiguring and starting Pound on ubuntu. We started by using apt-get to install the pound package.

?> apt-get install pound

Disabling apache2:

?> /etc/init.d/apache2 stop

Disabling apache2 from starting on boot:

?> sudo vim /etc/default/apache

Enabling pound to start when booting:

?> sudo vim /etc/default/pound

Configuring Pound:

?> sudo vim /etc/pound/pound.cfg

Starting pound:

?> sudo /etc/init.d/pound start

Finding errors when it started ... the default pound config file is for an older version of pound.

?> tail -f /var/log/daement.log

The best help is in the man page:

?> man pound

Our final pound.cfg

***************

## Minimal sample pound.cfg
##
## see pound(8) for details


######################################################################
## global options:

User "www-data"
Group "www-data"
#RootJail /chroot/pound

## Logging: (goes to syslog by default)
## 0 no logging
## 1 normal
## 2 extended
## 3 Apache-style (common log format)
LogLevel 3

## check backend every X secs:
Alive 30

## use hardware-accelleration card supported by openssl(1):
#SSLEngine


######################################################################
## listen, redirect and ... to:

ListenHTTP
Address your.IP
Port 80
End

Service
BackEnd
Address 192.168.0.2
Port 80
Priority 1
End

BackEnd
Address "node2"

Port 80
Priority 1
End
Session
Type BASIC
TTL 300
End
End

You want to reboot your server to make sure your setup is correct.

 

Getting pen going is really simple ...

 

?> sudo pen 25 node1:25 node2:25