session implementation with load balance

Anon

Suppose we are setting up a NAT firewall to do the packet filtering job and balance the load,which session handler is preferred?
With the session handler that comes with php4--file and mm--seems not feasible for performance and data integrity issue.Phplib implements session handler with databases,which may be a terrible thing while number of concurrent connection is high.Another choice is db,but is that really better than others?
I have limited experience with Java Servlet,
and I found that most application servers implemented session bounded to server,which means that once a session is started,the user will be served by the same server regardless load balancing.Any way to implement this with php?

Anon

I believe (other may feel free to argue) that the best way is to use PHP4 sessions, with the session information stored in a shared database.

I am sure there is an article here (www.phpbuilder.net) on how to set that up. That way users are not bound to a single server, and no high layer (http) smarts are required from the load balancer. Just have a good speed connection to the DB server from the web servers, the DB hits should not take much time to complete, as they are simple lookups.

This method also makes it easier to bring servers in and out of the cluster without stranding users who's session are tied to the server you are removing.

-Pete

Anon

I am running into the same problem. I have built a session management system before using MySQL which was great for adding and removing web servers, but under high load (1000+ concurrent connections) MySQL seems to start acting funny and crashes.

In my new project, I am trying to avoid relying on mysql for temporary storage of data (like sessions), so I am considering a NFS mount drive that web servers will connect to and store session data on. I don't have any experience with NFS drives, so I'd like to hear opinions on using this approach to store sessions.

Anon

under high loadavg environment, NFS driver is bad choose.

It's will lead to sys cpu% so heavy.

sys cpu% between 20 to 30.