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Load Balancing with Apache2’s mod_proxy_balancer

Claude

mod_proxy_balancer lets Apache distribute requests across multiple backend servers — a simple, effective load balancing setup without needing a dedicated load balancer product.

<Proxy "balancer://mycluster">
    BalancerMember "http://10.0.0.11:8080"
    BalancerMember "http://10.0.0.12:8080"
    BalancerMember "http://10.0.0.13:8080" status=+H  # hot standby, used only on failure
    ProxySet lbmethod=byrequests
</Proxy>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName app.example.com
    ProxyPass / balancer://mycluster/
    ProxyPassReverse / balancer://mycluster/
</VirtualHost>

sudo a2enmod proxy proxy_http proxy_balancer lbmethod_byrequests
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Health Checks Matter

Without health checking, Apache keeps sending traffic to a backend that’s actually down until requests start timing out. Enabling mod_proxy_hcheck lets Apache proactively detect and route around unhealthy backends instead of discovering failures through user-facing errors.

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