[dev] Re: [cvs] commit: horde/docs CHANGES horde/lib Horde.php

[Rich Lafferty]

On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 12:36:08AM +0200, Atif Ghaffar (aghaffar@developer.ch) wrote:
> Rich Lafferty wrote:
> > If your load balancer doesn't have any concept of sessions, it'll have
> > already broken on PHP sessions.
> 
> No rich, sessions are kept in datbase. (custom session handler)

That doesn't matter.  The proper way to load-balance dynamic content
is with a load balancer that understands that it has to make up for
HTTP's statelessness. If yours doesn't, it is broken for what you
appear to want to use it for, and fixing the effects of its brokenness
elsewhere does not stop it from being broken. Ensuring that no Web
applications ever use files is *not* the way to work around a load
balancer that is not designed to handle dynamic content.
("Content-aware" is the marketing term, IIRC.)

> IMP 2.2.x was perfect to run on loadbalanced machines, unfortunately 2.3
> relies a lot of filesystem.

As long as you don't use any server-side attachment viewers. Since
IMP 2.2.x *does* use server-side attachment viewers, it is not
perfect to run on a machine with a load balancer that is not designed
for dynamic content. 

Relying on the filesystem is a perfectly legitimate assumption, since
that is precisely the problem that load balancers are supposed to
solve. (Otherwise you wouldn't need a load balancer; round-robin DNS
would accomplish the same thing.)

On load balancers' intelligence requirements: 
<URL:http://www.networkmagazine.com/article/NMG20000426S0014>
  
  -Rich

-- 
------------------------------ Rich Lafferty ---------------------------
 Sysadmin/Programmer, Instructional and Information Technology Services
   Concordia University, Montreal, QC                 (514) 848-7625
------------------------- rich@alcor.concordia.ca ----------------------