We currently use an apache web server to reverse proxy to a few of our internal websites. It works great and does everything we need it to do. But I'm starting to get a little nervous when I ask myself "what happens if that box goes belly up?" So I began to think about load balancing my reverse proxy server. Which sounds like a good idea on the surface. But as I thought about it more I asked myself, using DNS round robin, what will happen if the external user switches reverse proxy servers mid session? I would guess he would loose his session and have to start all over again. That would not be a good thing. Then I thought that maybe simply putting a second box there with identical configs and do fail-over. I discussed that idea with my boss, but he has a real problem with buying a server to just sit around waiting for a failure. He would much rather have that second machine doing something useful. Have any of you traveled down this road? Are any of beginning to travel down this road? Is there a session based cookie thing that could solve this delima? If so, can someone point me towards "cookies for non-programming idiots" that could teach me how to do this?

Thanks,

Dep