Apache Tomcat Connector connection pool's relation to workers and processes?

[Br...@thomson.com]

First, thanks in advance!
 
I have been playing with the 1.2.23 version of the JK Connector. In
particular, I've been setting up an Apache 2 front end to multiple
Tomcat 6's by using load balancing workers delegating to "real" workers.
For the most part the documentation is quite clear, but something I've
not found explictly discussed (perhaps I've just missed it???) is the
relation between the connector's connection pool and the workers.
 
Discussions of the connection pool note that a pool is set up for each
Apache child process and the number of connections in the pool should
correspond to the number of threads in the child process (for threaded
Apaches). Each child process will have its own instance of the connector
and the connector's load balancer worker and real workers (I would
assume). 
 
- Are the connections in the connection pool simply dolled out as needed
to real workers, across all workers and their target Tomcats?
 
- In the ("old new") JK2 connector, there was a setting to limit the
number of connections from a worker to its target (the Tomcat instance).
Looks like there is no such option on JK 1.2.x? If not, one would be
able to limit the overall number of connections (from and Apache
process) to all the workers/Tomcats via the connection_pool_size, and
one would be able to throttle the number of simultaneous requests Tomcat
would attempt to handle via the maxProcessors attribute. I liked the
ability to throttle the traffic to the worker (on the web server) so I
just wanted to ensure I understood the JK model.
 
- Should the number of connections really match the Apache child process
threads? The Apache threads might need to be set "high" to handle static
content requests and traffic spikes that you don't want Tomcat to deal
with...
 
Thanks again!
 
Brian
 
Brian D. Horblit
Senior Principal Engineer
Thomson Healthcare

(303) 486-6697
(800) 525-9083 x 6697
www.thomsonhealthcare.com <http://www.thomsonhealthcare.com/> 
brian.horblit@thomson.com