Apache load balancing with JBoss worker nodes configuration

[kroberts1]

I would like to use apache to load balance http requests to a cluster of JBoss server instances. I think JNDI and EJB clustering will be too expensive for this application, so I prefer clustering at the http level. The main reason for clustering is to scale memory across several JVMs so I would like to instantiate several server instances on one computer.

It is not clear to me from reading the docs how to configure and instantiate multiple server instances on the same computer.

I have been able to get a simple configuration of one JBoss instance to work with the apache load balancer. I tried intantiating another instance by copying the config directory of that instance and changed the config to reflect the new instance. When I tried to start the new server instance, I got a complaint about ports already utilized. This leads me to believe that I'm on the wrong trac...

Is it necessary to start each instance individually? If so, how is it configured? If not, how is it configured? I want to use the fail over capabilities of JBoss clustering, so I'm assuming that I'll need all the JBoss clustering configuration. It's not clear how the node instances get instantiated and how each instance would be differentiated by apache. There doesn't appear to be a way to configure the port of each server instance...

I'm using Apache 2.0.53 - JBoss 4.0.1RC2 - mod_jk 1.2.8-apache-2.0.52

Any recommendations or ideas would be greatly appreiated
Thanks in advance
Keith Roberts...

[kroberts1]

Well, I went ahead and made a copy of the cofiguration that I got to work and cleaned up all the duplicate port numbers from the copy.

I managed to get two server instances up and running. Tests indicated that the cluster was working properly, so I'm assuming that I did it correctly.

It just seemed like kind of an awkward way to do it. Coming up with a scripted way to install a cluster from a single config description may be a bit of a challenge. I'll use XSL; but I'm not sure if the rewriting feature is strong enough to create directories.