[ale] Linking Linuxes

[Dan Newcombe]

> I spoke with a rep from SGI that mentioned you could take SGI WebForce 
> servers and link them together to handle the incoming load.
> Is there a way you can do that with Linux boxes or is this guy blowing
> smoke?
> He said that Netscape has 8 SGI's linked together at www.netscape.com and 
> that's how they handled 1 Billion hits last month on their site.

Yahoo does something like that - you hit www.yahoo.com, and you may be 
sent to www1, www2, www3, etc...

It may be some kinda proxy server, or special DNS setup which gives a 
different address each time to keep them rotating.  The main concern 
would be how do you let all 8 share data?  Do they all have copies of 
the same data on thier machines?  Or are they linked via a fast 
ethernet internally, with external connections on another net segment?

I'm sure it could be done via Linux.
For example:
	Have one killer machine have the main hard disk.
	It has a fast ethernet card in it.  On this card are
	seven other Linux stations, pulling the files off the
	main server via NFS.
	Each of the seven machines also has another card in it to 
	serve as a link to the outside world.
	You also have a machine which (somehow) hands connections off from
	www.whatever.org to www1, www2,www3, etc... acting as a front end.

	-Dan

--
Dan Newcombe - Clayton State College - User Services - 770-961-3421 
newcombe at aa.csc.peachnet.edu  http://www.csc.peachnet.edu/home/dan/
- You, the child that once loved, the child before they broke his heart.
  The heart, the heart that I believed was lost.  So it's me I see, I
  can do anything.  I'm still the child.   (Marillion, Childhoods End?)