Ease of management

The administrative burden associated with the cluster (sysplex) should not increase as you add servers to the cluster. You should use the same configurations for many systems in the cluster. Within a sysplex, servers are homogenous, because a sysplex is comprised solely of System z® servers. As such, many of the configurations can be shared among the different System z servers, which reduces the administrative burden associated with the sysplex. Additionally, as the size of the cluster increases, the administrative overhead in adding systems to the cluster should be as low as possible.

Administrative activities required to maintain a load balancing solution are highly dependent on the type of load balancing solution deployed. For example, administrative tasks associated with the maintenance of internal load balancing solutions typically consist of administrative tasks within the z/OS® sysplex, such as changing z/OS configuration files. External load balancing solutions typically require administrative tasks performed on the external load balancing components, while sysplex-aware external load balancing solutions might require administrative tasks on both internal and external load balancing components. Depending on your environment and organizational structure, the administrative scope required by the various load balancing solutions can play a key role in your selection process. For example, do you need to deploy a solution that requires only administrative tasks on z/OS, or can you make required updates to network components as necessary?