Load Balancing with Server Clusters

With IBM® SPSS® Collaboration and Deployment Services, a plug-in called the Coordinator of Processes can be used to manage services on the network. The Coordinator of Processes provides server management capabilities designed to optimize client-server communication and processing.

Services to be managed, such as IBM SPSS Statistics Server or IBM SPSS Modeler Server, register with the Coordinator of Processes upon starting and periodically send updated status messages. Services can also store any necessary configuration files in the IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services Repository and retrieve them when initializing.

Executing your IBM SPSS Modeler streams on a server can increase performance. In some cases, you may have only the choice of one or two servers. In other cases, you might be offered a larger choice of servers because there is a substantive difference between each server, such as owner, access rights, server data, test versus production servers, and so on. In addition, if you have the Coordinator of Processes on your network, you might be offered a server cluster.

A server cluster is a group of servers that are interchangeable in terms of configuration and resources. The Coordinator of Processes determines which server is best suited to respond to a processing request, using an algorithm that will balance the load according to several criteria, including the server weights, user priorities, and current processing loads. For more information, see the Coordinator of Processes Service Developer’s Guide available in the IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services documentation suite.

Whenever you connect to a server or server cluster in IBM SPSS Modeler, you can enter a server manually or search for a server or cluster using the Coordinator of Processes. See the topic Connecting to IBM SPSS Modeler Server for more information.