Apache stopping all servers when one has a problem - apache

Question

I am relatively new to Apache and am having a problem where all virutal servers are being stopped when one of them has a problem. We had a problem which brought down our backend service (testing.my-domain-name.ch) for testing and caused a 502 error, and apache delivered that same error for our production facility (www.my-domain-name.ch), even though it was still running (verified by using a wget).
My httpd.conf file looks like:
ServerRoot "/etc/httpd"
PidFile run/httpd.pid
Timeout 120
KeepAlive Off
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 15
Listen 0.0.0.0:80
Include conf.modules.d/*.conf # Everything in conf.d is at default values
User apache
Group apache
ServerAdmin root#localhost
ServerName test.my-domain-name.ch:80
UseCanonicalName Off
#
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride none
Require all denied
</Directory>
DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
<Directory "/var/www">
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>
<Directory "/var/www/html">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>
#
<IfModule dir_module>
DirectoryIndex index.html
</IfModule>
#
<Files ".ht*">
Require all denied
</Files>
ErrorLog "logs/error_log"
LogLevel warn
<IfModule log_config_module>
#
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common
<IfModule logio_module>
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %I %O" combinedio
</IfModule>
CustomLog "logs/access_log" combined
</IfModule>
<IfModule alias_module>
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"
</IfModule>
<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options None
Require all granted
</Directory>
<IfModule mime_module>
TypesConfig /etc/mime.types
AddType application/x-compress .Z
AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz
#
AddType text/html .shtml
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml
</IfModule>
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
<IfModule mime_magic_module>
MIMEMagicFile conf/magic
</IfModule>
EnableSendfile on
IncludeOptional conf.d/*.conf # Everything in conf.d is at default values
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName my-domain-name.ch
Redirect permanent / https://www.my-domain-name.ch/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName production.my-domain-name.ch
ServerAlias www.my-domain-name.ch
DocumentRoot /var/www/node/prod/production
SSLProxyEngine on
ProxyPass /account/ https://www.account-server.com/account/ retry=1
ProxyPassReverse /account/ https://www.account-server.com/account/
ProxyPass /oauth2/ https://www.account-server.com/oauth2/ retry=1
ProxyPassReverse /oauth2/ https://www.account-server.com/oauth2/
ProxyPass / http://localhost:3001/ retry=1 Keepalive=on
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:3001/
CustomLog logs/access_log_production "%v %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b production"
<Directory /var/www/node/prod/production>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName test.my-domain-name.ch
DocumentRoot /var/www/node/test/testing
SSLProxyEngine on
ProxyPass /account/ https://www.account-server.com/account/ retry=1
ProxyPassReverse /account/ https://www.account-server.com/account/
ProxyPass /oauth2/ https://www.account-server.com/oauth2/ retry=1
ProxyPassReverse /oauth2/ https://www.account-server.com/oauth2/
ProxyPass / http://localhost:3000/ retry=1 Keepalive=on
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:3000/
CustomLog logs/access_log_staging "%v %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b staging"
<Directory /var/www/node/test/testing>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
The error message that I am getting is:
[Mon Sep 07 11:47:35.784583 2020] [proxy_http:error] [pid 46205] [client 10.19.65.68:44942] AH01114: HTTP: failed to make connection to backend: localhost
[Mon Sep 07 11:47:46.049988 2020] [proxy:error] [pid 46206] (111)Connection refused: AH00957: HTTP: attempt to connect to 127.0.0.1:3000 (localhost) failed
Can anybod help me understand how to configure things where when one virtual host goes down, it doesn't bring down the others?
Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Nic3500 - thank you for your answer:
You cannot, as long as you have all the configuration in the same files, running under the same process. If you want to have a test setup, it should be under a separate Apache configuration. You can run two instances with different configurations on the same machine, as long as you do not use the same port for both. Or setup a VM into which you can put your test configuration (or docker, or ...). You could run apache -t to check your configuration before restarting it.