How to run multiple instance of Pound load balancer service

Question

I followed the instruction at this link to setup Pound load-balancer on my fedora server. Everything works fine. Pound is running on port 80. Now I want to configure Pound on a different port and balance 2 other different backend servers.

I found this other link, which details how to accomplish this. But that tutorial path do not match Fedora 22 paths.

The thing is, I want to either (i)configure Pound on multiple ports which balances different IPs on each port OR (ii) run 2 different instances of Pound with separate config files for each port

Answer 1

Finally figured it out myself.

Initial Setup

1. Install Pound using the command "sudo yum install Pound".
2. Start pound and run it once "sudo service pound start".
3. Check if pound is working fine with 1 instance.
4. Now stop pound service before moving on to creating multiple instance "sudo service pound stop"

Step 1

Create pound config files for each instance separately. The default file will be at /etc/pound.cfg

sudo cp -p /etc/pound.cfg /etc/pound1.cfg
sudo cp -p /etc/pound.cfg /etc/pound2.cfg

Step 2

Create dummy pid files for each instance separately. The default file will be at /var/run/pound.pid

sudo cp -p /var/run/pound.pid /var/run/pound1.pid
sudo cp -p /var/run/pound.pid /var/run/pound2.pid

Step 3

Edit the default configuration file and assign different http port for each instance.

Modify "Control" path and backend servers to load balance for each instance

sudo nano /etc/pound1.cfg

pound1.cfg

User "pound"
Group "pound"
Control "/var/lib/pound/pound1.cfg"

ListenHTTP
    Address 0.0.0.0
    Port 8879
End

Service
    BackEnd
        Address 139.16.00.82
        Port    8879
    End

    BackEnd
        Address 139.16.00.88
        Port    8879
    End
End

Edit config for 2nd instance

sudo nano /etc/pound2.cfg

pound2.cfg

User "pound"
Group "pound"
Control "/var/lib/pound/pound2.cfg"

ListenHTTP
    Address 0.0.0.0
    Port 80
End

Service
    BackEnd
        Address 139.16.00.85
        Port    8080
    End

    BackEnd
        Address 139.16.00.86
        Port    8080
    End
End

Step 4

Copy pound service file to create individual file for each instance. This will be located at /usr/lib/systemd/system/pound.service

sudo cp -p /usr/lib/systemd/system/pound.service /usr/lib/systemd/system/pound1.service
sudo cp -p /usr/lib/systemd/system/pound.service /usr/lib/systemd/system/pound2.service

Edit service file to use appropriate config and pid file

sudo nano /usr/lib/systemd/system/pound1.service

pound1.service

[Unit]
Description=Pound Reverse Proxy And Load-balancer
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/run/pound1.pid
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/pound -f /etc/pound1.cfg -p /var/run/pound1.pid

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

pound2.service

[Unit]
Description=Pound Reverse Proxy And Load-balancer
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/run/pound2.pid
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/pound -f /etc/pound2.cfg -p /var/run/pound2.pid

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Step 5

Now reload the systemctl daemon and start running both the services

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo service pound1 start
sudo service pound2 start

If you face any issues, check the status using the below command, which helped me identify some issues

sudo service pound1 status

Note: I have removed the https config in my cfg files, since i didn't need them

Answer 2

Just add multiple ListenHTTP directives :

ListenHTTP
    Address 0.0.0.0
    Port 8879
    Service
        BackEnd
            Address 139.16.00.82
            Port    8879
        End

        BackEnd
            Address 139.16.00.88
            Port    8879
        End
    End
End

ListenHTTP
    Address 0.0.0.0
    Port 80
    Service
        BackEnd
            Address 139.16.00.85
            Port    8080
        End
        BackEnd
            Address 139.16.00.86
            Port    8080
        End
    End
End