Configuring a load balancing environment

You can setup a load balancing cluster of portal nodes with identical configurations to evenly distribute user sessions. Load balancing is ideal for environments with a large user population. When a node within a cluster fails, new user sessions are directed to other active nodes. The load balancing functionality is provided in Dashboard Application Services Hub.

Work load is distributed by session, not by request. If a node in the cluster fails, users who are in session with that node must log back in to access the Web GUI. Any unsaved work is not recovered.

For more information about setting up and configuring a load balancing environment, search for Load balancing for Dashboard Application Services Hub on the Jazz® for Service Management information center at http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEKCU/welcome.

In addition to the load balancing configuration on Dashboard Application Services Hub, you need to make settings in the Web GUI server.init file whenever you add a node to a load balancing cluster, or whenever you remove a node from a cluster. The configuration for server.init is described below.

Functionality delivered in fix pack 21High Availability (HA) support for ObjectServer
For more information about enabling HA on a Tivoli® Netcool®/OMNIbus ObjectServer for Jazz for Service Management or Dashboard Application Services Hub, see: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6373940
For more information about migrating from Db2 to ObjectServer, see: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6373944

Procedure

  • To start Web GUI load balancing operations on a node:
    1. Open the WEBGUI_HOME/etc/server.init file in a text editor and locate the properties that begin with the cluster.mode property.
    2. Set the values of the properties as follows:
      Table 1. Setting the load balancing properties
      Property Value
      cluster.mode on
      Functionality delivered in fix pack 21cluster.db The database to store high availability configuration data, db2 (Db2 default value) or os (ObjectServer).
      cluster.hostname The name or TCP/IP address of the host that is running the new node. For example, server1.
      cluster.port The number of the SSL port that the Web GUI server uses. For example 16311.
    3. Set the timedtasks.enabled to true.
    4. Configure the schedules for timed tasks as required.
      Define the same set of timed tasks with identical schedules on all nodes in the cluster.
    5. Restart the server.
    The node is joined to the cluster and reads it configuration data from the database.
  • To remove a node from a cluster:
    1. Ensure that no users are logged in to the node.
    2. To remove the load balancing information for the node from the configuration database of the cluster, run the following Web GUI Administration API (WAAPI) command from the node: 
      WEBGUI_HOME/waapi/etc/samples/cluster_removenode.xml
    3. Open the server.init and set the cluster.mode property to off.
      The properties are in Table 1. You can optionally reset the other properties.
    4. Restart the server.
    The node is restored as a stand-alone system.

Results

For more information about configuring an ObjectServer failover pair to support HA for Web GUI and Dashboard Application Services Hub see: Configuring an ObjectServer failover pair to support load balancing