High availability and load balancing for host database connectivity

In today's information technology market, there is a high demand for around the clock availability of data.

This demand must be met in order for a business to compete with its competitors and maintain continued growth. Many of today's web and spreadsheet applications require access to enterprise data.

A reliable, fast and secure connection to IBM mainframe databases must be established. This connection must be constantly available and be able to handle the high connection demands under critical load conditions.

How can this connection be built?

High availability scenario

A company has several workstations and application servers running on Windows, Linux®, and UNIX. These machines require access to data residing on several IBM mainframe databases. Applications running on these machines demand fast and reliable connections to the databases. The entire system is connected by an Ethernet network using TCP/IP.

Figure 1. Sample network scenario
This figure shows a sample network.

For workstations and application servers to access IBM mainframe databases, you need a connectivity component as an intermediary. This component must provide a highly available, robust, and fast connection to IBM mainframe databases. It must also be scalable to anticipate for future growth in connection volume.

Use the related links from this topic to see details regarding a solution using Db2 Connect and the automatic client reroute feature .