LinuxQuestions.org - Needs some advice on building a web server setup

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Needs some advice on building a web server setup

as a project i wanted to build a server. a clustered server with failover because i'll be hosting a apache+php+mysql web application.

right now i've gathered some information but i think thats not enough. i wanted to use slackware as its os but i cannot find a tutorial that would give me detailed explanation on how to do this.

i'm hoping to have some hardware explanations too.

i saw this project http://helmer.sfe.se/ and i tought it was a cool thing to do, plus i'd get learn in this rather than buying some built server. i also would like to test it first on 2 computers(nodes).

i got an average skill in linux so be gentle guys.. thanks..^^

Hardware is going to be the same for a typical server.

For an easy howto you can follow the directions here:
http://www.howtoforge.com/high_avail...apache_cluster

this one might also be usefull
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...-ha/index.html

If your familiar with Slackware then go for it, but i think you'll find more documentation and help online going with Debian or Fedora.

also look into given Lighttpd a try if your looking for performance. I recently switched from Apache to Lighttpd and the speed difference on a Wordpress site i host is amazing (got even better when i added xCache)

thanks.. i've been using slackware for about 4-5months now and it seems that i've learned much that's why im going with it. i already have a working apache + php + mysql configured and working on my box but its not a server.

if i setup a cluster does the 2 nodes have to be identical in their specs?

another question would it have more cores if i cluster it like in here http://helmer.sfe.se/ where the server they made was a 24 core computer?

sorry for those questions.. i'm actually new to this kinds of stuffs and i'm realy in to learning it.. thanks..

Quote:

Originally Posted by danboland (Post 3916334)

Quote:

http://helmer.sfe.se/

did was build a bargain super computer. He has 24 CPU's working together to complete jobs. and he uses the DrQueue software to distribute the work load between them. If you wanted to do that, the only hardware requirement seems to be have the NAS, which kinda makes sense for data integrity across the processes.

But you said you were doing a web server which is not really done as the same thing. You could do what google does and have a cloud system that handles all the searching done on a huge database, but just serving web pages with load balancing and a false safe for crashes isn't really the same thing.

In your setup for the web server there really us no hardware requirements. But, depending on what you are doing, you'll usually want the software to be the same versions across systems.

Some web servers like this system use a NAS as well, but i've always preferred the systems where you have say, 2 servers providing requires and an rsync job in the background of one that keeps the http files in sync. However if you have data that apache is constantly changing then you're going to want to have a NAS.

The same would go with them mysql, you'd have to sync the data files back and forth, or setup a master and slave system for replication. Tons of software out there that can give you a single interface that controls a dynamic backend of servers. I've only had additinal mysql servers for performance, but the same software setups would in affect give you redundancy backups.

thanks.. you gave a lot of information.. while there were no reply on this post i read some forums and web pages to gather some more data.

right now im planing to use debian then hope to gain more experience then hopefully the next project i could apply it on slackware.

hmmm.. could i do a load-balancing and a failover with just 3 computers? 1 will be the load balancer then the other 2 nodes will be the real server?

Quote:

Originally Posted by danboland (Post 3919955)

In my experience they are usually the same specs but this is not a requirement. Usually if your building something like this you just buy 2 or 3 parts of each. But it depends on what its being used for in the end.

What this guy

did was build a bargain super computer. He has 24 CPU's working together to complete jobs. and he uses the DrQueue software to distribute the work load between them. If you wanted to do that, the only hardware requirement seems to be have the NAS, which kinda makes sense for data integrity across the processes.

But you said you were doing a web server which is not really done as the same thing. You could do what google does and have a cloud system that handles all the searching done on a huge database, but just serving web pages with load balancing and a false safe for crashes isn't really the same thing.

In your setup for the web server there really us no hardware requirements. But, depending on what you are doing, you'll usually want the software to be the same versions across systems.

Some web servers like this system use a NAS as well, but i've always preferred the systems where you have say, 2 servers providing requires and an rsync job in the background of one that keeps the http files in sync. However if you have data that apache is constantly changing then you're going to want to have a NAS.

The same would go with them mysql, you'd have to sync the data files back and forth, or setup a master and slave system for replication. Tons of software out there that can give you a single interface that controls a dynamic backend of servers. I've only had additinal mysql servers for performance, but the same software setups would in affect give you redundancy backups.