Multiple Listeners

In the Theatre Manager Apache build that is provided, there is a loadable module (mod_tm.so) that is used as the broker to distribute requests from the customer to one or more internal web listeners. The design is such that it is horizontally scaleable. If you only want one listener, the module handles that. If you have a big onsale day, then you can have more. The apache module looks for busy and/or failure of any web listener and redirects traffic as appropriate. If you shut down all web listeners, the Apache module directs traffic to a 'web site down' web page that you can customize.

In general, the average venue has two listeners in case one computer fails. While unusual, computers do die so two reduces a point of failure. Since the price of a mac mini or a PC is low, the cost of expansion is minimal. (The little bit extra cost for Macs is worth it for unix underpinnings and, no virus, etc).

Very large on sales days or very large volume venues may want more than two listeners. For example, a venue turned on 7 listeners on the day they put their summer concert season on sale to handle $1.2M in sales - using average machines around the office - and turned them off the next day.

In the diagram below, extra listeners are simply started on any machine in the Theatre Manager Lan by going to the 'Patron Sales' menu and picking Web Sales Module->Web Sales Listener