[users@httpd] Terminology clarification question.....

[Charles W Buege <cb...@moreycorp.com>]

Everyone - 

This is a request for education on proper terminology and I hope I'm 
asking this in the right place.  If I'm not, please feel free to point me 
in the right direction.

I've been working with the Apache server (primary under CentOS, but some 
under Red Hat and on XAMPP stacks as well) and have been tasked with a 
project.

Periodically, we need to have our web sites down for maintenane - updates, 
backups, etc.  What I've been told to do is find a way to have a 'front 
end' to our web sites so that, when they are down for maintenance, that 
then end-users will receive a message 'This site is down for maintenance 
till XX:XX AM/PM' or such.

Here are my questions:
- What would you call what I am trying to setup?  The reading I've done 
implies that what I really want to setup is a reverse proxy server.  Is 
that what I want to do?
- If it isn't a reverse proxy I want to set up, what do I want to setup?
- Of the different types of solutions available, I've been tasked to spend 
as little money as possible (some surprise, huh?) so I'd want to do this 
via open source solutions.  Does anyone have any 
suggestions/recommendations for what I could use for this?  I've read 
about using Nginx in front of Apache, I've heard of Squid, I've heard 
about Tomcat, but as I said I'm still pretty new to this and am more than 
willing to take any suggestions that anyone wants to send me.
- Is this a type of 'clustering/high availabity' project I'm really 
looking at here?  I've been hearing those terms thrown about as well.
- If anyone has any suggestions for where I can go from here to learn more 
about the proper terminology so I don't sound like a complete noob (even 
though in this case, I kinda am), I'll take that direction too.

In case it makes any kind of a difference, the Apache instances are pretty 
simple - PHP, MySQL and that's about it - not very involved (for now). I'm 
hoping that I can learn what/how to do this correctly and, when I'm ready 
to add more capabilities, that I'll be able to extrapolate out from there 
what I'd need to do.

Thanks to any direction I can get from anyone!!

Charles
cbuege at moreycorp dot com - if you feel like e-mailing me directly!!



This e-mail, including attachments, may contain information that is 
confidential and/or proprietary, and may only be used by the person to 
whom this email is addressed. If the recipient of this e-mail is not the 
intended recipient or an authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified 
that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this e-mail is 
prohibited. If this e-mail has been delivered to you in error, please 
notify the sender by replying to this message and deleting this e-mail 
immediately.

Re: [users@httpd] Terminology clarification question.....

[Nagaraju Kurma <na...@enhancesys.com>]

i want to delete the unnecessary previous posts of mine, Can u tell me how
delete the requests and responses that we have posted


On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 2:54 AM, Charles W Buege <cb...@moreycorp.com>wrote:

> Everyone -
>
> This is a request for education on proper terminology and I hope I'm
> asking this in the right place.  If I'm not, please feel free to point me
> in the right direction.
>
> I've been working with the Apache server (primary under CentOS, but some
> under Red Hat and on XAMPP stacks as well) and have been tasked with a
> project.
>
> Periodically, we need to have our web sites down for maintenane - updates,
> backups, etc.  What I've been told to do is find a way to have a 'front
> end' to our web sites so that, when they are down for maintenance, that
> then end-users will receive a message 'This site is down for maintenance
> till XX:XX AM/PM' or such.
>
> Here are my questions:
> - What would you call what I am trying to setup?  The reading I've done
> implies that what I really want to setup is a reverse proxy server.  Is
> that what I want to do?
> - If it isn't a reverse proxy I want to set up, what do I want to setup?
> - Of the different types of solutions available, I've been tasked to spend
> as little money as possible (some surprise, huh?) so I'd want to do this
> via open source solutions.  Does anyone have any
> suggestions/recommendations for what I could use for this?  I've read about
> using Nginx in front of Apache, I've heard of Squid, I've heard about
> Tomcat, but as I said I'm still pretty new to this and am more than willing
> to take any suggestions that anyone wants to send me.
> - Is this a type of 'clustering/high availabity' project I'm really
> looking at here?  I've been hearing those terms thrown about as well.
> - If anyone has any suggestions for where I can go from here to learn more
> about the proper terminology so I don't sound like a complete noob (even
> though in this case, I kinda am), I'll take that direction too.
>
> In case it makes any kind of a difference, the Apache instances are pretty
> simple - PHP, MySQL and that's about it - not very involved (for now).  I'm
> hoping that I can learn what/how to do this correctly and, when I'm ready
> to add more capabilities, that I'll be able to extrapolate out from there
> what I'd need to do.
>
> Thanks to any direction I can get from anyone!!
>
> Charles
> cbuege at moreycorp dot com - if you feel like e-mailing me directly!!
>
>
>
> This e-mail, including attachments, may contain information that is
> confidential and/or proprietary, and may only be used by the person to whom
> this email is addressed. If the recipient of this e-mail is not the
> intended recipient or an authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified
> that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this e-mail is
> prohibited. If this e-mail has been delivered to you in error, please
> notify the sender by replying to this message and deleting this e-mail
> immediately.




-- 

Thanks & Regards,

Nagaraju K

Re: [users@httpd] Terminology clarification question.....

[Yehuda Katz <ye...@ymkatz.net>]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Charles W Buege <cb...@moreycorp.com>wrote:

> Periodically, we need to have our web sites down for maintenane - updates,
> backups, etc.  What I've been told to do is find a way to have a 'front
> end' to our web sites so that, when they are down for maintenance, that
> then end-users will receive a message 'This site is down for maintenance
> till XX:XX AM/PM' or such.
>

How many sites (servers, vhosts)?
How often is the downtime and is it predictable?


> - What would you call what I am trying to setup?  The reading I've done
> implies that what I really want to setup is a reverse proxy server.  Is
> that what I want to do?
>

If you don't need a reverse proxy for any other reason, then it seems to me
that it would be overkill to set one up just for this.


> - If it isn't a reverse proxy I want to set up, what do I want to setup?
>

You could add a line to the config of each vhost that redirects all
requests to a temporary error page.
I have done this with a PHP script that returns a nice page with a 503
status code.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule !maintinence.php$ /maintinence.php [P]

(Note: I am recreating this from memory because I can only log into the
server from my office, so YMMV.)

I put this commented out in a file that is included in every vhost, so I
change it once and run httpd-k graceful


> - Is this a type of 'clustering/high availabity' project I'm really
> looking at here?  I've been hearing those terms thrown about as well.
>

High-availability would be that you want to have more than one server so
that if one stops working, the websites will still be available.
Sometimes this can include taking one server offline to update it and then
switching all traffic to that one while you update the second one.
(Server combinations like nginx-unicorn for Ruby/Rails have that built in.)

- Y