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7.1: Using WebSphere Application Server in a multimachine environment >
7.1.1: Scaling up WebSphere applications
7.1.1: Scaling up WebSphere applications
Multimachine applications can be configured in a variety of ways to scale up a system
to add more processing power, improve security, maximize availability, and balance
workloads. The WebSphere Application Server, Advanced Edition provides several ways to implement
configurations that address these issues. These scaling techniques are generally combined
to maximize the benefits and minimize the problems associated with multimachine systems.
- Server groups and cloning. Cloning allows the creation of multiple
copies of an application server. The first step is to create a server group based upon the
application server's current configuration. You can then create clones of the server
group. Clones can be created on the same physical machine or on different machines. Using
clones can improve the performance of a server, simplify its administration, and enable
the use of workload managment; however, there is a point of diminishing returns when
adding more clones slows down the system due to the extra network traffic required for
managing the clones.
- Workload management (WLM). Incoming processing requests from clients
are transparently distributed among the clones of an application server. WLM enables both
load balancing and failover, improving the reliability and scalability of WebSphere
applications. In addition, administrative servers can participate in WLM for failover
support.
- IP sprayer. An IP sprayer transparently redirects incoming HTTP
requests from Web clients to a set of Web servers. Although the clients behave as if they
are communicating directly with a given Web server, the IP sprayer is actually
intercepting all requests and distributing them among all the available Web servers in the
cluster. IP sprayers (such as IBM Network Dispatcher or Cisco Local Director) can provide
scalability, load balancing, and failover for Web servers.
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