This diagram illustrates a web application cluster architecture designed to ensure load balancing, failover, and scalability for a web application. A cluster setup like this is essential when a web application must handle a large number of concurrent users or require redundancy to avoid downtime. In this diagram, multiple servers collaborate to distribute the load, ensuring that the system can handle high traffic efficiently.
The goal of this architecture is to provide a reliable, scalable environment that ensures user requests are handled without a single point of failure. This setup is commonly seen in enterprises where web applications serve mission-critical functions, and downtime or slow responses can have significant business impacts.
The diagram follows a clear architecture flow, starting with Personal Computers (client-side) making requests via HTTP protocol to a load balancer server (Apache HTTP Server 2.2), which is responsible for distributing traffic across multiple Apache Tomcat application servers. These application servers run the web applications and communicate with a database server to fetch and update data.
Client Side:
Personal Computer: This component represents end-users accessing the web application via a browser.
Protocol: The HTTP protocol is used to request the web application.
Web Server:
Apache HTTP Server: This acts as the load balancer, handling incoming HTTP requests. It uses modules like mod_jk
and mod_proxy_balancer
to balance the traffic across multiple servers and direct requests appropriately.
Static Content: This is served directly from the Apache HTTP Server without passing through the backend servers, enhancing performance for static resources like images, CSS, and JavaScript files.
Application Servers:
Tomcat Servers (pptom10, pptom11, etc.): These servers handle the web applications and are distributed across multiple physical machines (Sun Fire X4150 Servers) to ensure that the load is balanced. Each Tomcat server runs a specific web application, and they are accessed using the AJP13 protocol to improve performance for the back-end communication.
Database Server:
Oracle Database (11g): This server manages and stores user and order data, with the schemas named ‘Users’ and ‘Orders’ representing the core data models for this application. The database server is hosted on a Sun SPARC server, ensuring robust and reliable data storage.
Connections:
The servers communicate using different protocols such as TCP/IP and AJP13 for various purposes. The AJP13 protocol is used to forward requests from the Apache HTTP Server to the Tomcat servers, which reduces overhead and enhances performance in this clustered setup. The backend servers communicate with the database server over TCP/IP, ensuring reliable data transmission.
When designing a web application cluster like this, some key guidelines should be considered:
This architecture can vary depending on the scale of the application. For smaller applications, a single web server and a couple of application servers may suffice, whereas for larger enterprises, there may be many more layers of redundancy and servers.
This example of a web application cluster provides a foundation for building a scalable and reliable infrastructure. By using MockFlow’s flowchart maker, you can modify this diagram to suit your specific application needs. Whether you need to add more servers for increased scalability, adjust the protocols for security, or change the database structure, MockFlow gives you the flexibility to customize the design. Use this as a starting point and adapt it to your infrastructure requirements to create a robust, high-performance system.