On-demand routing and dynamic cluster support
WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment provides extended application infrastructure virtualization capabilities that include intelligent load balancing and clustering techniques. It introduces the concepts of on-demand routing and dynamic clustering, which provide an on-demand flexible infrastructure for enterprise-scalable applications.
- On-demand routing
- The on-demand router (ODR) is an intelligent load balancer that
receives, prioritizes, and distributes all the incoming requests across
multiple servers. Unlike a regular load balancer that can route requests
to an overloaded or hung server, the ODR has knowledge of the available
processing capacity and health of the application servers and, based
on this information, determines where the requests should be run.
The ODR can support business goals at peak times by making smart decisions about the incoming work and by efficiently routing the different flows of requests to balance the workload.
- Dynamic clusters
- Clustering improves the availability of web applications or resources by routing user requests from overloaded systems to systems that can handle the workload. Application servers can be started or stopped in the cluster to meet the current demand for applications that are deployed to the cluster.