Re: [squid-users] Reverse proxy non-performance benefits

On Thursday 07 February 2008 09:13, Henrik K wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 10:12:32PM -0500, Chris Woodfield wrote:
> > On Feb 6, 2008, at 3:44 AM, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> >>> I see Apache can also do reverse proxy, which was surprising to me,
> >>> or
> >>> is it not quite the same thing?
> >>
> >> Sort of. :)
> >
> > Apache's ProxyPass module performs similar proxying functionality, but
> > without squid's caching abilities, so you won't get any traffic-
> > offloading benefits, which really is squid's raison d'etre - the other
> > benefits Adrian mentioned are more or less side benefits.
>
> Is Apache's caching so bad it's not worth mentioning? It definately has the
> ability.

I know an ex-Plone person, who used to use the Apache proxying function in
front of Zope.

We benchmarked that on vanilla x86 test box (think low end Pentium). Zope
default config could serve about 3 "static" images a second (or some such
hideous result!). Apache proxying boosted this to several hundred images a
seconds.

It was literally a line or two of rewrite rules in the Apache2 config file.

I think where you are just trying to proxy something like Zope (i.e. same
server), and there is other Apache config involved (i.e. you want to serve
some content via other means - such as a bit of PHP, or a bit of server side
includes, or simple static content outside of Zope, or even Apache custom
errors), then the Apache proxy using "Rewrite" is a lot easier than
introducing a whole new squid install into the equation, and performance was
acceptable.

I don't think the Zope crowd use ProxyPass much, they use RewriteRules.

With the RewriteRules it is much like typical Apache configuration, and you
can exercise detailed control of the proxy behaviour in the Apache rewrite
rules. Which would I think is slightly easier than trying to do the same in
squid.conf.

If it was "everything in Zope", no Apache anything, then a reverse Squid proxy
is easier than using Apache as "just a proxy".

Once you start getting multiple Zope servers, then you get into a whole new
ball game, and the Zope folk will sell you stuff to make it work nicely as I
understand it. I didn't get involved in that, I was just working with the guy
to understand how it all fitted together initially, and on one occaison to
stop his Apache box being an open proxy (grr - read the log files people!).

Disclaimer - whilst I know one of the guys working on the Apache proxy rules,
I don't bother him with my questions on how to use it. On the other hand,
reading his blog, the proxying behaviour should be even better in future
versions of Apache!
Received on Thu Feb 07 2008 - 04:02:27 MST