RE: [squid-users] Busy Transparent Cache Causing Problems

On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Elsen Marc wrote:

> I see this more as an issue with the L4 box, then with Squid.
> Just keep the thing forwarding, else, throw it away.

Yes and no. Many L4 boxes have built in service monitors backing off from
the server when it stops responding properly to improve system
reliability. If the proxy is properly set up this should not happen and if
it happens it is good to investigate why.

But yes, configuring the balancer to always try even if it thinks there is
no working servers is may be a good idea if it takes long for the balancer
to recover the status of a server after a "failure" or if the cause to the
failure is due to stupid non-load related things such as TCP SYN backlog..

But if the cause to the L4 backoff is real then backing off actually
improves service quality as this gives some breathing room for the server
to recover, stopping it from spiralling down to death due to overload..

Hope this view makes sense.

Regards
Henrik