Configuring load balancing and failover for federated environments

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This topic only applies to BAW, and is located in the BAW repository. Last updated on 2025-03-13 12:15
You can configure IBM® HTTP Server or another reverse proxy server for load balancing and failover handling in federated environments. Instead of incoming HTTP requests going directly to Process Federation Server, they go to the IBM HTTP Server or reverse proxy server, which then distributes the requests across multiple Process Federation Servers that perform the work.

About this task

The following figure shows an example of a configuration topology for a production environment that includes load balancing with IBM HTTP Server:
The topology that is shown in the diagram includes IBM HTTP Servers in front of all the components in the federated environment for load balancing of the HTTP requests.

Although Process Federation Server is based on WebSphere® Application Server Liberty Network Deployment, a cluster of process federation servers does not require a configured Liberty collective or the clusterMember-1.0 feature on each process federation server. While a Liberty collective can help to administer multiple servers, it is not necessary for a cluster of process federation servers. The following procedure assumes that a Liberty collective is not configured.

Procedure

Although the specific configuration steps might differ depending on your environment, the following procedure can help you implement workload balancing and failover with IBM HTTP Server.

  1. Install IBM HTTP Server and configure a web server plug-in for the IBM HTTP Server.
    Follow steps 1 - 7 for the installation and configuration on WebSphere Application Server Liberty Network Deployment: Configuring a web server plug-in for the Liberty profile External link opens a new window or tab.
    Tips:
    • Use the WebSphere Customization Toolbox to configure the web server plug-in for IBM HTTP Server.
    • Generate a plugin-cfg.xml plug-in file for each Process Federation Server in your environment.
  2. Merge the plugin-cfg.xml files into one plugin-cfg.xml plug-in file for the federated environment.
    Attention: Because the federated environment configuration does not use Liberty collectives, you cannot use the ClusterManager MBean generateClusterPluginConfig operation to generate the merged plugin-cfg.xml file.
    To merge the files, use the pluginCfgMerge tool or manually merge them. For more information, see Configuring simple load balancing across multiple application server profiles External link opens a new window or tab.
  3. Copy the merged plugin-cfg.xml file to IBM HTTP Server.
  4. Secure IBM HTTP Server.
    For a secure federated environment, ensure that you configure at least the following security aspects.
    1. Configure the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol on IBM HTTP Server.
      For more information, see Securing with SSL communications External link opens a new window or tab.
    2. Configure the IBM HTTP Server to trust the Process Federation Server certificate by importing the Process Federation Server signer certificate into the IBM HTTP Server truststore.
      For production environments, use a certificate authority certificate. For more information, see Storing a certificate authority certificate External link opens a new window or tab.
    For more information about configuring other security aspects, see Securing IBM HTTP Server External link opens a new window or tab.