practical guide to using nginx loadbalancer - Step 1

In this guide i will show you how to use nginx as an load balancer for php sites running on apache

You can see the old article where i describe the basic idea

I suppose nginx+apache are already installed and working

apache by default is on port 80 nginx on my machine is on port 8087 (by default is on 80 but i moved to 8087)

What is next ? Step one is to test nginx as an proxy for apache and to be an accelerator for static content

apache is to slow on that area , and nginx/lighty are small and blazing fast

replace any 80 port in apache with 8000

grep -r 80 /etc/apache2

and wherever you see 80 in port.conf or virtual host please replace with 8000

hen i have created the proxy config

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/proxy

server {

listen: 80;

server_name: foobar.example.com;

location / {

proxy_pass http://foobar.example.comt:8000;

}

}

restart both apache and nginx

and you should load the local websites and test if they are ok

Next we will add an rule so that all images / javascript /css will not be proxied but served by nginx

erver {

listen 80;

server_name www.foobar.example.comt;

# serve static files

location ~ ^/(img|images|javascript|js|css|flash|media|static)/ {

root /var/www;

# expires 30d;

}

location / {

proxy_pass http://www.foobar.example.com:8000;

proxy_set_header Host $host;

proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

}

}

So now we have fast serving for images and php is served by one apache

Next we will add more apache servers and do some tests