It looks like this issue cannot be fixed by just adjusting configuration file, so I figure I should submit an idea/feature request here. Original thread : http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?15,5180 proxy_store, while the file is being retrieved from backend, should only make one connection to backend. say if there are 50 clients retrieving one link, they should all be pulling data from a temp_by nginx-100 - Ideas and Feature Requests
One idea is that you can put a caching proxy in front of proxy_store. This way, a proper caching proxy will not stampede the backend. However, there's still a heavy disk io problem as each nginx->caching proxy connection means a file being written to disk. Basically with this setup, you can prevent network, but not disk io stampede. (Disabling mod_h264 won't work either as the file neeby nginx-100 - Other discussion
Sorry to resurrect this old thread. I was wondering if there is any remedy for this stampede problem. It would have been nice if proxy_store works in the same manner as proxy_cache. (using just one connection to backend for multiple client connections) The problem is that mod_h264 doesn't work with proxy_cache, hence the need to use proxy_store.by nginx-100 - Other discussion