Dear list,

Is there a way to tell Pound to use backend server1 whenever
it's available, then server2, but only when server1 is dead,
then server3, but only when the first two are dead and so on ?
Even better, in the similar situations use servers "server1x",
then "server2x" etc. If not, is there other simple way to have
a hot standby server ?

The doc for that is rather cryptic:

BackEnd address,port,priority[,ha_port]
Specify a backend server: address and port. Priority is 1  to  9
and  defines a weighting - higher priority servers get used more
often.

But what does that "more often" mean and how is it measured ?

Sincerely,
Dmitry Dvoinikov
http://www.targeted.org/

Ok, I've found the answers:
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The last sentence is not true in my case though - I have two servers,
each beaing a database, only one has a live replica, and the other
(which also has other uses) has a bit outdated backup one and I want
it to pick up only if the primary server goes down.
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From svc.c it looks like a host with priority N gets selected
with probability 1/rand()%N

Sincerely,
Dmitry Dvoinikov
http://www.targeted.org/

--- Original message follows ---
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> with probability 1/rand()%N

1/N

Sincerely,
Dmitry Dvoinikov
http://www.targeted.org/

--- Original message follows ---
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>>> The simplest way is to define the "reserve" server with an HA
port:
>>> 
>>> URLGroup ".*"
>>> BackEnd main.server,80,1
>>> BackEnd spare.server,80,1,9080
>>> EndGroup
>>> 
>>> Make sure nothing listens on spare.server:9080. Start something
that accepts
>>> connections on it only when your main.server goes down (use your
normal
>>> monitoring for that).
>>> 
>>> In general I agree that it doesn't make much sense to have unused
servers - if
>>> they are good for hot back-up then they are also good enough for
load
>>> balancing.
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