[Zope] Caching/http-acceleration and proxying Zope-served content

[Shane Hathaway]

sean.upton@uniontrib.com wrote:
> 
> I have a question, for anyone experienced in working with Zope and caching
> proxies:
> 
> I'm setting up a load-balanced server farm that has nodes that will run
> Apache and proxy (via mod_proxy) to ZEO clients running ZServer.  This farm
> is routed (both ways) through a layer 4 load-balancing appliance, and all
> these boxes (both nodes and the balancer) are sitting inside a DMZ with
> private IP addresses.  The public world will access these servers via a
> firewall box running transparent proxy (actually, I guess, similar to
> squid's http_accel mode; the semantics here are a bit tricky, as it's more
> of a inverse trans-proxy).  Between Apache and Zope, there would be several
> virtual hosts, and I'd be using the SiteAccess product.  It gets a bit
> tricky in that I need to access several different virtual hosts inside the
> DMZ (one for the ZEO farm, and another for a dedicated CGI-based ad server
> on another box) via the proxy.  A more detailed (ascii art) diagram of what
> I am trying to do, is at http://209.132.8.98/server_ascii_art.txt
> 
> My question is this: does anybody have any thoughts on the merits of Squid
> (http accelerator mode) versus Apache/mod_proxy in terms of caching, virtual
> hosts, and the like when working with Zope sites?  Any big pitfalls to this
> kind of setup with Zope sites?

I would prefer Squid since its only purpose in life is caching.  It
follows the "do one thing and do it well" mantra.

But whatever your choice, I hope you make use of the new CacheManagement
feature in Zope 2.3.  It is designed to make things like this
straightforward and easy.  There's a recent news announcement that links
to everything you need--including complete help docs!

Shane