IP sprayer topology

To obtain high availability and the maximum balancing of server and workload capacity, deploy a load balancer upstream of a group of web servers.

The load balancer performs intelligent balancing among the web servers based on server availability and workload capacity. Choose this topology to eliminate a single point of failure at the web server level. This arrangement also spreads the load of web requests across multiple web servers. IBM® InfoSphere® Information Server supports many IP sprayer solutions manufactured by IBM and by other vendors.

To prevent single points of failure at the load balancer level, deploy a backup load balancer to take over in case the active one fails.

The following diagram shows an IP sprayer topology. The diagram shows an InfoSphere Information Server cluster with two front-end web servers. A load balancer is deployed upstream of the web servers. A backup load balancer is also deployed. The web servers and load balancers are installed on separate servers.

Figure 1. IP sprayer topology
This figure is described in the surrounding text.