Re: NewCache - a requirements spec v0.01

Chuck Murcko wrote:

> This is interesting: what happens if you replace the browser
> in your diagrams with another Apache + cache? It seems like a
> reasonable way to do cache synchronization amongst a server
> cluster, or an akamai-type distributed cache. The caches could
> transfer compressed objects between themselves, so compression
> would happen only once per object no matter how many caches are maintaining sync.

This is what squid does - yes - this would be a very useful feature indeed.

Some would argue that putting a squid cache in front of Apache will solve this problem, BUT - the idea falls down due to request logging. The only sane place to collect hits statistics is at the topmost level in the cache hierarchy. If you were using squid, then squid would have been doing all the logging, and handling different virtual hosts in different files isn't something squid is any good at. So - a 100% Apache solution would be great.

Squid already uses a number of protocols to implement parent and sibling caches - Apache's new "any protocol" support should be ideal for this.

One thing I wouldn't do is build the capability into mod_cache - I'd build the capability directly into mod_proxy itself, with the ability to query the objects in the storage manager directly. This way mod_cache doesn't get the ability to talk to other servers out there - that's mod_proxy's job.

In fact this might be a good reason to spilt out the storage manager into it's own module: mod_storage. This module could be used to load and save any object to any kind of storage, be it RAM, disk, database, LDAP, whatever.

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Regards,
Graham

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