Project 4 HowTo - Load Balance

We have configured a load balancer (roadrunner.cs.ucsb.edu) so that you can distribute requests across the three server machines. You first have to have your servers' port number configured: send e mail to blanquer@cs.ucsb.edu with your port number (if you have not already done so).

To send requests to your servers through the load balancer, you MUST use one of the three client machines (porsche, corvette, maserati) because of special routing requirements. Point your test program (or browser) at your port on roadrunner, e.g. http://roadrunner:8001 (assuming 8001 is your port). Each of the requests will be forwarded to one of the three servers (lotus, daimler and bentley) in a round-robin manner.

It is important that you send the requests FROM the three client machines, it won't work otherwise. For example, DON'T try to connect to http://roadrunner:8001 from your browser on your desktop workstation. If you need to browse your machines through roadrunner you can use lynx (a text-based web browser) from the client machines. Netscape is also available from the client machines but don't abuse it since it takes a lot of memory and if everyone uses it...

The balancer is not currently detecting whether the apache servers are available or not. It just assumes that all 3 apache servers are running on the 3 server machines. So it is important that you have ALL 3 apaches running when you use the balancer, otherwise some requests will be redirected to an "inexistent" apache and you'll get errors.

Please don't flood the machines excessively, have in mind that there are some 20 people working on them so they must be kept in a "usable" state.