Hi Folks,
We have a 2 IS on a single Cluster and only one Broker (residing on one of the IS). Right now we are using Round ROBIN method firing requests to the IS’s one after other to do the load balance. Does creating one more broker on the other IS and making the borkers to join a territory will help to create an effective LOAD balance ?

Hi…

what do you mean by effective load balance ?

Loading Balancing is usually done towards application side so that any request(HTTP, FTP, subscrition etc) are routed to servers in way no one server is loaded with many request at a time. I Dont see any logical point why you need to load balance webMethods Broker.

Also their no such thing like Load Balance for webMethods broker server.
Even if you install Broker Server on two IS and cluster them, it doesnt work in Active/Active mode, so you cant have load balancing with broker server.(some one correct me if I am wrong.)

Jiten

I recall that someone mentioned some time back that they had successfully load-balanced Brokers on 2 different Broker Servers. But it is not an officially supported configuration.

v_rock, are you trying to get more evenly distributed work between the two IS instances? There are two aspects to consider:

1. HTTP/FTP requests from other clients to IS. I assume you’re using an external load balancer. Tweaking how that device distributes the work is how you can try to more evenly share the load on the IS instances.

2. IS interaction with the Broker. Each IS instance connects to a single Broker (using the same Broker prefix), with triggers for the same client queues. Each IS will poll the queues for work. Broker will hand out the events based on the queue configuration. If you’re seeing more work being done by one IS than the other, that’s fairly typical. Take a look at your trigger settings and make appropriate adjustments for event order, serial vs. concurrent processing, etc.

What behavior are you seeing that gives you concern?

Hello,

reamon, thanx for correcting me. But I was just wondering how the cluster of two webMethods broker server will work in Active/Active mode because of the way its designed. How will the two broker server access the same queue storage file at the same time ? Also how will the two server would take part in territory and gateway ?

Jiten

You weren’t wrong really. IMO, one shouldn’t try to load balance Brokers.

I have no idea. I’ve never tried this configuration myself. There would be many hurdles to overcome. Perhaps the person that did this is still a participant/viewer of the forums? If so, might they post their experience? I tried a search to find that old thread I referenced but didn’t have any luck.

Broker servers cannot be clustered in active/active mode. Active/passive only. Not a supported configuration and you don’t want to try and force it. Corruption of your broker storage files will keep you up very late.

Thanks folk giving me a good insight. especially Rameon. My secondly concern whether the concept of territories will provide any help to develope or maintain Load Balance in any ways…

–No its not for like maintain LB …but it manages to connect between diff brokers (located geographically) into a Group and send/receive documents each other.

HTH,
RMg

Territories can help with load balancing, sort of, but only in a fairly static way. Territories and gateways are a mechanism to connect multiple Brokers together and have them exchange doc type definitions, subscriptions, etc. Clients still connect to just 1 Broker and have no idea that the territory exists.

A territory is basically a way to reduce administrative tasks and to provide a level of scalability. Scalability is provided by using multiple Brokers, but each Broker client is statically assigned to a single Broker. One would segregate Broker clients in a way that makes the most sense for the supported integrations–e.g. by business organization, by geography, or any arbitrary segregation such as “POs go through Broker A, Invoices through Broker B”.

Thanks for allof you for giving good insight