Re: Sessions and redundant servers

G'day again everybody, >> Here's a theoretical question for those of you using PHP's inbuilt session >> facilities... >> >> How do you "keep" your variables across redundant servers? Or, >> isn't anybody out there hosting PHP-based services on grouped >> servers? > > You are right, by default PHP stores session data in /tmp, but there are > ways to change this. First of all, rsync seems to be the least reliable > method, nfs seems better (i would not try it though). I have seen > session-handling implemented with postgresql (and i think porting it on > mysql isn't that hard...). You may want to take a look at > > http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.session.php Considering NFS is stateless, why do you consider it to be a more acceptable solution to, say, rsync (which I personally don't like - but that's another matter)? > Also see http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=php+session, there are > a few > implementations of db storage for sessions. > > Needless to say, having sessions stored on a database makes them available > across a cluster. I should have been "clearer" in my original question. It really was meant as a "what are others doing" - we've developed a MySQL-based session handler for a client (without wanting to start a flame war, I'd prefer to be using PostgreSQL but it isn't available on the client's selected hosting service). In our case, the web-servers are clustered, but I'm told the back-end databases aren't. From what I've been reading over the last few days, there aren't that many people hosting their services on a clustered setup, so this shouldn't really affect them. But, with the discussions that have been going on w.r.t. authentication and session-handling, I thought I should bring it up. Ciao. -- -------------------------------------------------------+--------------------- Daniel Baldoni BAppSc, PGradDipCompSci | Technical Director require 'std/disclaimer.pl' | LcdS Pty. Ltd. -------------------------------------------------------+ 856B Canning Hwy Phone/FAX: +61-8-9364-8171 | Applecross Mobile: 041-888-9794 | WA 6153 URL: http://www.lcds.com.au/ | Australia -------------------------------------------------------+--------------------- "Any time there's something so ridiculous that no rational systems programmer would even consider trying it, they send for me."; paraphrased from "King Of The Murgos" by David Eddings. (I'm not good, just crazy)