tomcat6mod-jk

Apache Mod_JK and Load Balancing

I am using Tomcat 6 and have some questions about Apache mod_jk as follows.

  1. Do I have to install Apache webserver to use mod_jk ??

  2. If I run applications on 2 servers under Tomcat and load balance between them using mod_jk, will this also check the availability of the applications i.e. will it only send requests to one server if the application is down on the other server ??

  3. If it checks for availability do you need to have multicast available on the network.

  4. We intend to use tomcat clustering as well, will this work with mod_jk ??

  5. Is there anything else I could use to load balance with availability checking for tomcat running applications ??.

Any help will be appreciated.

Cheers Jeff

Solution

    1. Yes.

    2. Yes, unless you go out of your way to configure mod_jk not to do that.

    3. No.

    4. Yes, but it is not necessary.

    5. Pretty much any H/W load-balancer, pretty much any web server that supports reverse proxy over HTTP or AJP.