Load balanced web farm using SSL

From: Griff (Howling_at_The.Moon)
Date: 07/06/04 

Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 13:11:18 +0100

One method to improve scalability is to implement a web farm where several
"identical" web servers sit behind a load balancer.

However, if these web servers support SSL then they're not "identical" as
they will have their own unique certificates.

The SSL hand-shake presumably can't survive if the load balancer keeps
swapping servers, so....how does this work?

Two scenarios that I can think of:

1 - all servers handle SSL (with their unique certificates) and the Load
Balancer only load balances http requests; all https requests remain
"sticky" to always call the same web server. Is this possible?

2 - one of the web servers in the farm is chosen to be the "lucky" one and
handle all SSL connections. The load balancer is made aware of this and
load balances http requests, but sends SSL ones through to only server A.
Is this possible?

If both 1 & 2 are possible, which is preferred? (Guess it's a case of 2
being cheaper since it involves purchasing one verified certificate and
therefore being the preferred option providing that it can cope with the
load...).

Thanks

Griff

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