Loadbalancer Recommendation?

We already splitted web and db server on two dedicated servers, running lighttpd, php fcgi and MySQL5.

However, the load of the webserver is pretty critical, can anyone recommend good software Loadbalancers?

Thanks!

[Kentaurus]

Yes, I myself like pound
http://www.apsis.ch/pound/

It doesn't have a pretty gui, but is highly configurable and low on resource usage.

Please share your experience with us afterwards, load-balancing a vbulletin sounds like a challenge, especially if storing the avatars/attachments in the filesystem

[weeno]

I have a round robin on two php servers for now. It works reasonably well, but can get off-balance with high traffic.

There are a few issues that you run into with splitting the php servers into two though, as mentioned above.... mostly you can't save anything to files (attachments, js, avatars) without making modifications.

arn

[reteep]

Thanks, we decided to give pound a try, I'll keep you informed about our results.. and yes, we do store avatars/attachments in the filesystem

[amcd]

lighttpd itself is the best load balancer around.

[TECK]

Originally Posted by amcd

lighttpd itself is the best load balancer around.

I totally agree.

1 webserver (lighttpd)
- 10.0.0.10
4 php-fastcgi-backends
- 10.0.0.20 ... .23

The config snippet for lighttpd:

fastcgi.server = (
	".php" => (
		("host" => "10.0.0.20", "port" => 2000, "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"),
		("host" => "10.0.0.21", "port" => 2000, "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"),
		("host" => "10.0.0.22", "port" => 2000, "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"),
		("host" => "10.0.0.23", "port" => 2000, "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable")
	)
)

[reteep]

Oh, didn't know that this is possible, sounds like a great alternative, thanks!

[tonyzhou]

Nginx is a better load balancer but not as configurable as lighttpd.

[TECK]

I like that Nginx doesn't suffer from memory leak over time. But you will need to "steal" lighty's files (spawn-fcgi), in order to get it working with PHP5 and XCache. I will give it a try and let you know.

[HDT]

Thanks for this info,will try this alternative.