2 days (16 hours total)
Focus: performance, reverse proxying, load-balancing, security modules, caching, advanced SSL, automation, troubleshooting.
Day 1 – Performance, Reverse Proxying, Caching, Architecture
1. Advanced MPM & Threading
Event tuning in depth, thread/workers model, CPU pinning, connection handling, keepalive queues, impact of slow clients.
2. Reverse Proxy Architecture
mod_proxy internal flow, request pipes, buffering, streaming, backend health checks, timeout tuning.
3. Load Balancing
mod_proxy_balancer, session stickiness, hot-standby nodes, lbmethods, draining nodes, failover behaviour.
4. Advanced Caching
mod_cache, disk vs memory caching, cache invalidation, key normalization, stale-while-revalidate, reverse proxy caching patterns.
5. Advanced Rewriting
Deep mod_rewrite rules, complex conditions, dynamic maps, rewrite loops, performance considerations.
6. WebSockets & Upgrade Handling
Proxy WebSocket support, protocol upgrade, reverse proxy tuning for streaming and long-lived connections.
Day 2 – Security, TLS, Observability, Automation
7. Advanced TLS
TLS 1.3 tuning, cipher suites, OCSP stapling, ALPN behaviour, performance impacts, client fingerprinting considerations.
8. mod_security2 Deep Dive
Rule writing, anomaly scoring, CRS tuning, whitelisting, false-positive analysis, request inspection pipeline.
9. Advanced Authorization
External auth providers, LDAP/AD integration, JWT/OAuth2 offload patterns, per-location auth flows.
10. Rate Limiting & DoS Protection
mod_ratelimit, request filtering, body size limits, timeout matrix, slowloris defense, reverse-proxy throttle logic.
11. Logging & Observability
Custom log formats, JSON structured logs, correlation IDs, per-vhost log tuning, log piping, high-volume logging strategies.
12. Performance Debugging
mod_status, scoreboard analysis, connection states, thread utilization, slow request hunting, backend latency isolation.
13. Automation & CI/CD Integration
Config modularization, template-based deployments, git-based config repos, Apache test automation with apachectl -t & containers.
14. Zero-Downtime Reload & Rolling Deployments
Graceful restarts, phased config rollout, draining traffic between nodes, how not to break long-lived connections.