Configuring distributed installation for load balancing

You can configure your reporting system to obtain higher performance and usability levels while running reports by adding another reporting engine system, and ensure failover.

Before you begin

An existing instance of Tivoli® Common Reporting has been installed, as described in Installing Tivoli Common Reporting.

Attention: To enable load balancing, both instances of Tivoli Common Reporting must be at the same version level.

About this task

Load balancing allows you to have multiple user interfaces and reporting engines installed, which distribute and balance loads among the computers. This, in turn, improves scalability in an environment where there is a large volume of report requests to process. It also ensures failover. The following diagram presents how various components are linked together to ensure load balancing.

Procedure

Install a second instance of Tivoli Common Reporting reusing the existing Content Store. See Installing Tivoli Common Reporting.
Attention: When you attempt to reuse a Content Store, a warning is displayed in relation to version of the Content Store database. You must acknowledge the warning to proceed.
For each instance of Tivoli Common Reporting locate and edit the following file in a text editor:
REPORTING_HOME/lib/configuration/urlconfiguration.properties
1. For each urlconfiguration.properties add an entry to include the fully qualified domain name for the server on which Tivoli Common Reporting is installed, as follows:
  urlprovider.hostName=fully qualified domain name
  Note: A fully qualified domain name (FQDN) includes both the hostname and the domain name, for example, server1.tivoli.ibm.com.
2. Optional: If you do not plan to install SSL certificates for the IBM® WebSphere® Application Server instances associated with the Tivoli Common Reporting instances, you can disable warnings associated with SSL certificates by disabling HTTPS by making further edit to urlconfiguration.properties. To do so, add the following entry:
  urlprovider.protocol=http and replace the secure port (default is 16311) with the non-secure port (default is 16311) in the following entry:
  urlprovider.portNumber=16311.
Use a common user repository (for example, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)) for both Tivoli Common Reporting instances. See Configuring Jazz for Service Management for a central user registry.
Install and configure an HTTP server to balance incoming requests across both instances of Tivoli Common Reporting. For more information, see:
Preparing the HTTP server for load balancing

Results

User requests coming into the HTTP server are load balanced to the Tivoli Common Reporting instances. As the Tivoli Common Reporting instances connect to the same Content store, the reporting engines are also load-balanced and share the same reporting artifacts.

What to do next

To finish the configuration, see the following topics of the IBM Cognos® information center:
- Balance requests among reporting engines. You can set the way in which the requests are handled among the dispatchers.
- Use cluster compatible mode for dispatchers. You can change the way in which the load is balanced in your infrastructure.
Learn how to: