WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, Version 6.0.x     Operating Systems: AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, Windows

Balancing workloads with clusters

Before you begin

Consider your options for configuring application servers. See Managing application servers for more information.

Why and when to perform this task

To monitor application servers and manage the workloads of servers, use server clusters and cluster members.

To assist you in understanding how to configure and use clusters for workload management, consider this scenario. Client requests are distributed among the cluster members on a single machine. (A client refers to any servlet, Java application, or other program or component that connects the end user and the application server that is being accessed.) In more complex workload management scenarios, you can distribute cluster members to remote machines.

Steps for this task

  1. Decide which application server you want to cluster.
  2. Decide whether you want to replicate data. Replication is a service that transfers data, objects, or events among application servers. See Replicating data across application servers in a cluster for more information. You can create a replication domain when creating a cluster.
  3. Deploy the application onto the application server.
  4. After configuring the application server and the application components exactly as you want them to be, create a cluster. The original server instance becomes a cluster member that is administered through the cluster. See Creating clusters for more information.
  5. You can create one or more cluster members of the cluster.
  6. Configure a backup cluster that handles requests if the primary cluster fails.
  7. Start all of the application servers by starting the cluster. Workload management automatically begins when you start the cluster members of the application server.
  8. Once you have the cluster running, you can perform the following tasks:

What to do next

For stand-alone Java clients, you must define a bootstrap host. Stand-alone Java clients are clients that are located on a different machine from the application server and have no administrative server. Add the following line to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) arguments for the client:
-Dcom.ibm.CORBA.BootstrapHost=machine_name
where machine_name is the name of the machine on which the administrative server is running.



Sub-topics
Clusters and workload management
Clusters and node groups
Workload management (WLM) for distributed platforms
Creating clusters
Creating cluster members
Creating backup clusters
Starting clusters
Stopping clusters
Replicating data across application servers in a cluster
Deleting clusters
Deleting cluster members
Tuning a workload management configuration
Workload management run-time exceptions
Clustering and workload management: Resources for learning
Task topic    

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Last updated: Mar 17, 2005 4:28:29 AM CST
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