Apache Server Sizing and Web Dispatcher filtering

Question

Hi,
We are planning to expose our intranet portal for internet user. An internet user would access it via browser (https) -> Apache - reverse proxy (outer DMZ) -> Web Dispatcher - Load Balancing (Inner DMZ) -> Portal.
We are looking for end-to-end SSL implementation.
My questions:
1] Do we need to have load balancing at apache server for performing reverse proxy? If yes, how it would be achieved?
2] What is the hardware sizing required for Apache server on Linux box?
3] Does the portal performance is affected by end-to-end SSL implementation?
4] In load balancing using Web Dispatcher, can we forward particular request to a specific application server? Like, filter out the internet requests or forward BI related requests to a specific application server node.
Regards,
Sham

Answer 1

Hi,
1) Depends on your requirement. When you have 1 Apache RP and 1 SAP Web Dispatcher, you won't need load balancing of at the Apache.
2) Depends on the number of concurrent requests you are expecting. More information on that can be found at apache.org
3) Portal performance gets affected when using SSL and the portal is responsible for the SSL (there are product out there that do the SSL handling). How much the SSL will affect your portal depends on the number of users. But generally the impact of SSL isn't really high with recent hardware, the portal will be more occupied with the number of users, navigation, etc than with SSL
4) You can use logon groups to assign a specific user (group) to a dedicated server
br,
Tobias