mod_cluster

Project mod_cluster is an intelligent load balancer. It uses a communication channel to forward requests from a reverse proxy server to one of a set of application server nodes. Unlike mod_jk and mod_proxy, mod_cluster leverages an additional connection between the application server nodes and the reverse proxy to transmit server-side load balance factors and lifecycle events back to the proxy. This additional feedback channel allows mod_cluster to offer a level of intelligence and granularity not found in other load balancing solutions. There are currently two reverse proxy implementations: a native Apache HTTP Server implementation and a pure Java Undertow-based implementation.

Project mod_cluster boasts the following advantages over other httpd-based load balancers:

• Dynamic configuration of httpd workers
• Server-side load balance factor calculation
• Fine-grained web-app lifecycle control
• AJP is optional

https://www.modcluster.io

Installation Instructions

WildFly 8 and newer

These versions already ship with bundled mod_cluster. It is configured via mod_cluster subsystem.

Tomcat 9.0 and newer

Distribution archives are provided for each Tomcat version.

1. Get the distribution archive corresponding to the intended Tomcat version by either downloading from the project website or if building from source located in dist/target/ directory.

2. Download and unzip or untar the distribution archive and navigate to the extracted directory.

3. Copy the lib/ directory to the Tomcat installation directory adding jars to its lib/ directory. If upgrading from a different version, it is necessary to remove all jars copied previously.

4. Modify server.xml within the conf directory and add the mod_cluster listener as documented here. The minimal listener configuration is as follows:

   <Listener className="org.jboss.modcluster.container.tomcat.ModClusterListener" connectorPort="8080" advertiseInterfaceName="lo0"/>

Project Structure

The Project is split up into multiple modules:

core (contains the implementation of container-independent core mod_cluster concepts)
container
  spi (SPI classes for container integrations, has no dependencies on a specific web container)
  tomcat-9.0 (Tomcat 9.0 container implementation)
  tomcat-10.1 (Tomcat 10.1 container implementation)
  tomcat-11.0 (Tomcat 11.0 container implementation)
load-spi (SPI classes for load metric computation)

Source Code

Source code for the mod_cluster project is located on GitHub:

https://github.com/modcluster/mod_cluster

Building

Servlet Container Modules

When building from source, first ensure that Maven version 3.2.5 or newer (run mvn -version) and JDK 17 or newer (run java -version) are installed. The following command builds modules for all containers:

mvn clean install

Distribution files for Tomcat will be built in the dist/target/ directory.

Code Coverage Report

This project currently supports JaCoCo to generate a code coverage report bound to verify goal:

mvn clean verify -P coverage

The resulting report can be viewed by opening code-coverage/target/site/jacoco-aggregate/index.html.

Reporting Issues

Project mod_cluster uses Red Hat Jira issue tracker under MODCLUSTER project:

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/MODCLUSTER

License

• Apache License 2.0