How do I use the REST api on an HBase cluster via load balancing

I have a pilot HBase cluster with 1 master and 5 slave nodes. I want to access (basically write ad impression data via GET's) the cluster via its REST API. I want to be able to run aggregated reports using Hadoop/Hive?Pig (TBD) later, so I want a single picture of the data.

Do I start the REST server on the master and just write to that single endpoint, or do I start a REST server instance on each slave node and load balance writes across the slave nodes?

(The latter doesn't seem right but I saw some mention in docs about that so am a little confused).

I use the rest api with load balancing provided through nginx. Your nginx config would look something like this...

upstream cluster
{
    server master:1234;
    server slave1:1234;
    server slave2:1234;
    server slave3:1234;
    server slave4:1234;
}
server
{
    listen 4444;
    server_name someserver.com;
    location /
    {
        proxy_pass http://cluster;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_next_upstream error timeout invalid_header http_500 http_502 http_503;
    }
}

You would run on all servers in the cluster

hbase rest -p 1234 start

You would call someserver.com:4444 for your rest calls.