Linux Web Server Load Balancing and Failover

I'm new to Linux, but I do have some experience with web servers on my Windows XP Home computer. I've ordered four 350mhz Dell computers from eBay to use as Linux web servers (in a cluster or cluster like setup). Here's what I'd like to do:

1. Configure load balancing on the web servers (without having to buy more equipment, I've heard that this may be possible with iptables but I'm not sure).
2. Configure failover, so that if one server goes down, it's detected, and browser's requests are directed to the other working servers.
3. Configure mirrored content so that the 3-4 servers grab content from another web server every 10 seconds.

Of course, since I'm new to Linux, I'd opt for the easiest and most efficient solution. Thanks in advance for your help.

Greetings,

a.) I dont know how to do with IPTables but you can do it by integreting the backhand module for apache. You can get the more information and how to do it on the following link: http://www.backhand.org/mod_backhand/

b.) You can check the failover by installing the heartbeat on the servers so that they continously keep on pinging each other and when ever one goes down the load is shifted to the other.

c.) For mirroring you can configure the rsync as it keeps everything in sync once being configured.

Regards

Can heartbeat tell the Apache module not to forward requests to a certain machine if it goes down?

Greetings,

AFAIK the HeartBeat won't be able to apache module do not forward the request which is down. You need to configure the same in the apache module istelf the hearbeat will make sure that the two systems are alive.

Regards