Site Architecture Update - New Load Balancing and High Availability

[RadioRob]

As of late yesterday, I have setup a new load balanced environment for the website.   So we now have two servers serving requests when you attempt to make a request.  This means that when I'm doing things like updating Apache, PHP or doing other server level tasks, our load balancer will route requests automatically to the other server.  This is the start of being able to setup a highly available site.  (The database and search functionality are still single threaded, but are less likely to be problematic and I can address this more in a later phase.)

Our two primary web servers are named Hooboy (#1) and Daddy (#2).

If you're curious about the high level architecture, the data flow for www.companyofmen.org looks like:

 

When requests come in, the load balancer sends half of requests to each server.  Literally as people have been using the site today, half of the time Hooboy answered and half the time Daddy answered.  If I ever lose one of those two servers, or need to work on one...  within 40 seconds, all requests will go to the other keeping us online.  

Prod-Web-1 (Hooboy)

Prod-Web-2 (Daddy)

[+ easygoingpal]

Pretty nifty set up...  The Load Balancer is a great addition...  Kudos for always coming up with top-of-the-line tech solutions for this website...  Cheers!!

[liubit]

Oh, I love it when you talk dirty-tech to us, @RadioRob 😎 Thank you for whatever it is you did, I am sure it will be good for us. 

[+ ButchAtl]

How did we get so lucky to have @RadioRobtaking care of things like this?  Even though I have little knowledge  of what he is taking about, I  appreciate his efforts!