Pros and Cons of proxy servers?

good point from spguru! :-) - multiple proxy servers ahead of a single application server may be a low cost way to boost performance of a single application without the complexity of a load balanced web app.

I maintain that one proxy <-> one web server is a waste of resources.

Cheers!

Good stuff guys.  Let me ask you this, you have a single web server that's due to have it's hardware upgraded.  Would you buy a pair of beefy servers and set them up for load balancing?  Or buy one beefy one, and two lesser ones and set them up as proxies?  They serve up dynamic content that include a ton of images to a global audience from a single location.

I would choose the dual load balanced option.

Cheers.

How much of the content is truly dynamic?  I would assume that the images are really static images.

Westez, Where will the users be coming from on the majority basis? 3 different sites or more? and where would you put the two proxies?

meverest - thanks man, I'm just trying to learn something here.  The longest journey begins with a single step.  And it sure helps to follow those who have already been down the path.

giltjr - Let me get back to you on how much of the content is dynamic.  I'll see if I can come up with a percentage.  I know there's a lot of ASP pages, and some .NET and C# that's tied to some SQL db's.

ravenpl -  Are you saying that by putting Squid before the web server helped by limiting the number of requests from thousands to hundreds?  I thought a reverse proxy in front of the web server would stop a dos from happening at all.

spguru14 - We're an academic institution so the sites are educational and used by folks from around the globe.  And we only have one location, so the proxies would be located here in front of the web server.  I'm guessing that your asking if we have multiple locations, similar to a branch office in another city or country that ties back to the home office.

The reason for my question is that if the majority of the content served up is static, then proxy servers would be a benefit.  If the majority is dynamic, then spend the money on the servers.

Since you have users around the globe, the locating proxies in various places around the world and doing load balancing around the world.  I don't know what your budget is, but there are companies (like Akamai) that will do the proxy function for you.  Of course it does cost money and I have no clue how much.

A reverse proxy will lessen the possibility of a DOS, it does not remove it.

> I thought a reverse proxy in front of the web server would stop a dos from happening at all.
Eventually the proxy can be dos-ed as well. Isn't it?

Dynamic content, single hosted location, and the visitors to the site are from all over the map.....spend the money beefing up the servers

ravenpl - >>Eventually the proxy can be dos-ed as well. Isn't it?

I wasn't sure, so hence the question.  Thanks to all for schooling me.
While we're on  the subject of dos.  Is it possible to protect your sites from such attacks?  I've just read about North Korea being a suspect in taking down several of our governments sites.  I figure the folks protecting those sites know far more than I, and they got taken down.

Regarding the servers, thanks for the advice, we'll get a couple of beefy ones and set them up with load balancing.  I've been searching through EE on the topic of load balancing, and have read that NLB is built in to Windows 2003, so I'm guessing that it's also included in Windows 2008 64 bit which is what we'll be installing on the new servers.

You really can't protect yourself from a DOS.  No matter what you do, there will be some limitation to the "capacity" you have and one of the possible DOS's is to make more requests that you can handle.

NLB is there on Windows 2008.