aparentemente, a terminologia que estou procurando é "hot standby". aqui está a configuração apropriada (observe o status = + H ):
<VirtualHost *:8080>
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
ServerName redacted.example.com
ProxyPreserveHost On
<Proxy balancer://mycluster>
BalancerMember http://10.0.0.1:8080
BalancerMember http://10.0.0.2:8080 status=+H
</Proxy>
ProxyPass / balancer://mycluster
ProxyPassReverse / balancer://mycluster
</VirtualHost>
aqui está o bit relevante da documentação :
status - Single letter value defining the initial status of this worker. [...] H: Worker is in hot-standby mode and will only be used if no other viable workers are available.