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IBM® WebSphere® Portal V5 provides an environment to build and deploy sophisticated Web-based applications, called portals. A portal is a Web site that provides users with a single point of access to Web resources. As e-businesses grow, they roll out more advanced Web applications to a wider audience. The e-business portal becomes another "face" of the company that serves its customers; therefore, it is important for the portal to be available and to provide reasonable response times.
You can use the load balancing features of the Cisco 11000 Context Service Switch (hereafter called CSS 11000) to enhance the availability and performance of a WebSphere Portal installation. The CSS 11000 is designed for HTTP traffic optimization. The switch software adds a Web-based layer to the switching mechanism. Requests are parsed so that intelligent decisions can be made using information in IP frames, URLs, and cookies.
Figure 1. Network configuration
Requests coming into the CSS 11000 are distributed across a group of portal servers. As demand grows, you might decide to add more servers. Because a single portal page is constructed from many HTTP requests, each portal server can assume part of the load, reducing the page response time. Also, if one of the portal servers fails, requests can be routed to another server in the group.
Setting up WebSphere Portal V5
Setting up WebSphere Portal to take advantage of load balancing involves installing, configuring, creating a cluster, and configuring security.
For detailed instructions on installing and configuring WebSphere Portal, see the InfoCenter for Version 5.0.2 .
To take advantage of load balancing, each portal server must have the same configuration. The easiest way to do this is to install WebSphere Portal in a clustered environment. New servers can be added or removed from the group with a minimal amount of work. In this environment, administering the portal is easier because all portal servers in the cluster share the same configuration database. For more information on building a portal cluster see the Installation scenarios section of the WebSphere Portal InfoCenter. See also the articles listed in Resources.
A WebSphere Portal typically has two types of access for portal users: public and protected. The public access area is open to all users of the portal and no user login is required. The protected area requires that a user be identified, usually with a userid and password.
To get around the problem of being prompted for a userid and password each time a request is routed to a new server, configure the portal servers with external authentication using Tivoli Access Manager WebSEAL. All portal servers and WebSEAL hosts must use the same LTPA key file and point to the same Tivoli Access Manager. On the first request for a protected resource, the user will be prompted for userid and password. WebSEAL attaches an LTPA token with user credentials to the request. All subsequent requests contain an LTPA token until the user logs off. For more information on configuring Tivoli Access Manager, see the Securing your portal section the WebSphere Portal InfoCenter.
When creating a load balancing configuration, you must configure services and content rules. Services identify the actual individual server, and content rules define the CSS load balancing features.
Create a service for each WebSEAL host and set the keepalive type to http. With http keepalive, CSS generates an HTTP request and checks the response to see if the service is still active. If CSS determines that a service is no longer functioning, it removes the service from the load balancing algorithm.
Listing 1. Configuring services with keepalive
!************************** SERVICE **************************
service WPST01
ip address 192.168.120.61
keepalive type HTTP
active
service WPST02
ip address 192.168.120.63
keepalive type HTTP
active
service WPST03
ip address 192.168.120.65
keepalive type HTTP
active
|
All content rules must exist under an owner. To specify the content rule to match all TCP traffic on port 80, as shown in listing 2:
- Set the
protocolto beTCP. - Set the
TCP portto be80. - Add services to the content rule to create a pool of servers that CSS uses for load balancing request for content.
- Create a virtual IP address for the content rule. Customers use this address to access portal resources.
Listing 2. Content Rules
!*************************** OWNER ***************************
owner IBM
content PORTAL
protocol tcp
port 80
add service WPST01
add service WPST02
add service WPST03
vip address 192.168.120.50
active
|
If your portal application requires that all requests be handled by the same
server, you must enable advanced load balancing for the content rule. The arrowpoint-cookie
method enables the content rule to associate the client to a server based on the unique service
identifier of the selected server. Use the string command to add a service identifier for
each service. Then add the advance-balance
command with the arrowpoint-cookie
option to the content rule definition. In Listing 3, the bold text enables advanced load balancing.
Listing 3. Content rule with advanced balancing
!************************** SERVICE **************************
service WPST01
ip address 192.168.120.61
keepalive type HTTP
string WPST01
active
service WPST02
ip address 192.168.120.63
keepalive type HTTP
string WPST02
active
service WPST03
ip address 192.168.120.65
keepalive type HTTP
string WPST03
active
!*************************** OWNER ***************************
owner IBM
content PORTAL
protocol tcp
port 80
add service WPST01
add service WPST02
add service WPST03
vip address 192.168.120.50
advanced-balance arrowpoint-cookie
active
|
To have an effective On Demand business, you must be able to adjust quickly to changing conditions. The combination of the Cisco CSS 11000 and the WebSphere Portal cluster gives portal administrators the flexibility to easily add additional servers as customer demand increases.
The author would like to thank Mike Law for his contribution as a technical reviewer.
- See the Cisco Web site for information about Cisco CSS 11000.
-
WebSphere Portal Version 5.0.2 InfoCenter is the primary resource for installation, configuration, and development information.
-
A step-by-step guide to configuring a WebSphere Portal V5 cluster tells how to set up a production clustered portal environment .
-
Maintenance procedures for WebSphere Portal V5.0 with 24x7 availability tells how to perform minor maintenance on a clustered WebSphere Portal V5 installation while maintaining 24x7 availability of the portal.
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