IBM WebSphere Load Balancer Components

Summary

The IBM WebSphere Load Balancer is a collection of several components: Dispatcher, Site Selector, Content-Based Routing, and Metric Server.

The Dispatcher component distributes IP connections among a set of servers. Server selection is based on monitored server health or user-defined criteria such as affinity, client IP address, or forwarding rules.

The Site Selector component is a basic DNS load balancer that answers IPv4 DNS requests based on the set of defined servers. The Site Selector component does not support IPv6 addressing.

The Content-Based Routing component is a plug-in module for the IBM WebSphere Application Server Edge Components Caching Proxy software. The Caching Proxy software obtains a server from the Content-Based Routing component when requested data is not in cache and must be obtained. This component is deprecated and support terminates 30 September 2024.

The Metric Server component is a reporting agent that can be installed and configured on servers defined in the Dispatcher, Content-Based Routing, or Site Selector components. Scripts are used to provide a measure of the server's health. Default scripts provide the percentage of used disk space and memory in-use. Authentication is required between the Metric Server and the Dispatcher, Content-Based Routing, or Site Selector component.

The Dispatcher component is the recommended component to load balance IP traffic.

This document provides information about the default installation location of logs and tools for the different components.