User selects preferred node

[Ulrik Sandberg]

I have a somewhat odd situation where I would like to use a load balancer as
a proxy, but I want the user to be able to actively select preferred node.

Consider this scenario:

A portal server allows remote web apps to display their content in a portlet
window by having a URL to the remote web app configured in the portlet
window. This becomes a problem in development with more than one developer.
It basically means that when you want to work on a portlet, you change the
URL to point to your local development app server. When you log out for the
day, the app has no remote web app for that portlet window and the portal is
broken. Other developers then need to find all "your" portlet windows and
reconfigure the URL to point to their local machines.

Could a load balancing proxy be used to solve this problem? Assume that I
point all portlet windows to the load balancer, on say localhost:8080. I
then have a way of actively selecting the preferred node from my browser,
perhaps by setting a request property on an initial request:

http://portal.example.com?node=developer1.internal.example.com:8080

Another developer selects his or her node:

http://portal.example.com?node=developer2.internal.example.com:8080

I guess the requested node is stored in a cookie by the load balancer. This
then tells the load balancer to try my node, if possible, whenever the
remote web app is being accessed from a request originating in my browser.
If my machine happens to be down, another node is used. When my machine
comes back up, my node is used again.

-- 
Ulrik
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