NYCPHP Meetup

[Chris Hubbard]

All,
Here's a weird question for you all.

Got a client who wants to run a couple different web servers, each 
server running a copy of the same php application.  There will be some 
sort (TBD) of load balancer between the servers and the internet.  And 
there will be a separate server for the database.
Users need to log into the application, and stay logged in while using 
the application.  We want to be able to keep the users session open 
even if one of the web servers crashes.  The users will be conducting 
transactions (against PostgreSQL), so I can use the transaction login 
in the database.

My understanding is that if we're using $_sessions and the server goes 
down, then, the user looses their session (and any work they'd done).  
One of the ideas we've come up with is using a cookie, so we know from 
the inbound request who is making the request.  But I'm not keen on 
cookies, for various reasons.

We're anticipating no more than 50 concurrent users at any given time.  
I don't have an idea on how much load on a server a single user will 
be.

Any thoughts, suggestions?
thanks,
Chris Hubbard
chubbard at next-online.net
425 563 4153