For this setup, we need four nodes (two Apache nodes and two load balancer nodes) and five IP addresses: one for each node and one virtual IP address that will be shared by the load balancer nodes and used for incoming HTTP requests.
I will use the following setup here:
Apache node 1: webserver1.tm.local (webserver1) – IP address: 192.168.0.103; Apache document root: /var/www
Apache node 2: webserver2.tm.local (webserver2) – IP address: 192.168.0.104; Apache document root: /var/www
Load Balancer node 1: loadb1.tm.local (loadb1) – IP address: 192.168.0.101
Load Balancer node 2: loadb2.tm.local (loadb2) – IP address: 192.168.0.102
Virtual IP Address: 192.168.0.105 (used for incoming requests)
In this tutorial I will use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS for all four nodes, just install basic Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on all four nodes. I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you! I also recommend you to have a DNS server in place.
