Service Guard with iPlanet Web Server and multiple port 80

[Jim Krol]

I am implementing a Web Server cluster with iPlanet-WebServer-Enterprise/4.1. I have looked through the MC/Service Guard documentation to see if I could find information on running different web environments (production, test, development) that could ALL use the default port 80 by redirecting the type of service to the correct web server.

Has anyone had experience with running multiple web servers, all of which default to port 80, but get redirected appropriately?

Thanks,

[Christopher Caldwell]

I'm not sure what you mean by re-direct; I'd handle service discrimination in DNS (e.g. www.yoursite.com, test.yoursite.com, devel.yoursite.com).

Web servers generally work like this:
1) bind to IP(s); ignore hostname (iPlanet calls this multiple server instances).
2) bind to IP(s) listen for multiple hostnames (iPlanet calls this Software Virtual Servers)

iPlanet has a third way:
3) They also have a hybrid that's designed to act like 1) but conserves resources like 2). (iPlanet calls this Hardware Virtual Servers).

4) You can also discrimate services by port.

Folks generally use 1 to balance resources or enforce different security restrictions among the different servers. 1 would be better for high performance apps.

Folks use 2 to conserve resources (like memory, process instances, IP addresses). 2 would be better for low traffic web sites.

All of this is immaterial to ServiceGuard, since you've got to make it all work *before* you get to ServiceGuard.

To implement ServiceGuard, we built the application directory (the place you installed iPlanet) and the data directory (they'll call it document root) on shared media. The SG scripts then set up the media (activate volume groups, mount file systems), add IPs for the web servers, then starts the web servers, just like any other package.

We've made this work for a fair number of web servers (a mix of Apache, NES 2.01, iPlanet 4.1) all listening on port 80.

If you want to "promote" from development, to test, to production, then share the data set, but install iPlanet on each of three servers (not shared). Buyer beware: Based on my Netscape experience, you'll run into configuration management problems if you intend to keep the three installs "sync'd from a CM perspective.

[Jim Krol]

test

[Jim Krol]

If I have two packages (which both use port 80) on the same node, which package replies to the incoming stuff on port 80? I need to know the feature on iPlanet that will allow the web pages associated with package A IP's address NOT to reply to port 80 requests for package B - and vise versa.

[Christopher Caldwell]

They both use port 80, but they bind to different IP addresses. In server manager create one server that binds to A.B.C.1 and another server that binds to A.B.C.2.

[Mark Bak]

As I understand your problem, you have a single NIC card that has two Package IP addresses responding to the same port. The only way I can see to get this working is to add another NIC Card on a different Subnet, and point one package to one subnet, and the other package to the other subnet. Without this approach, you will need to use different port numbers, as the ports are monitoring on the physical card, not the Package IP addresses.

[Steven Gillard_2]

As Christopher points out, you need two package IP addresses, one for each web server. Then, you configure each server to bind to a different IP address. This is performed in the server manager under the network settings page, with the "bind to address" setting.

Here's the documentation:

http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/41/ag/esapuir3.htm#1004818

Regards,
Steve