You can use either a Web server plug-in, or a WebSphere Application Server proxy server to provide session affinity, failover support, and workload balancing for your WebSphere Application Server topology .
You can also use the on demand router (ODR), that is provided with the WebSphere eXtended Deployment product, as a reverse proxy between an HTTP client and a clustered application, or a partitioned application. See the WebSphere eXtended Deployment Information Center at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wxsinfo/v7r0/index.jsp for more information about using ODR.
The following tables compare the core application server frontend functionality, and the non-core functionality of a Web server plug-in running in a modern Web server, such as the IBM HTTP Server, based on Apache HTTP Server, and a WebSphere Application Server proxy server.
Functionality | Web server plug-in | WebSphere Application Server proxy server |
---|---|---|
Session affinity | Yes | Yes1, 2 |
DMZ ready | Yes | No |
Custom advisors are supported | No | No3 |
Service Level Agreement (SLA) | No | No |
QoS/Throttling | No | No |
SIP proxy | No | Yes |
ESI dynamic Caching | Yes | Yes4 |
Managed from the administrative console | Yes | Yes |
Stream caching (large response caching) | Yes | No5 |
Dynamically receive management events6 | No | Yes |
Multi cells routing | No | Yes6 |
Performance monitoring | Yes7 | Yes7 |
Load Balancing (weighted round-robin) | Yes8 | Yes9 |
Routing rules are configurable | No10 | Yes |
Interoperability with WLM | Yes11 | Yes |
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Table notes:
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Functionality | Web server plug-in used with either the IBM HTTP Server or the Apache Web Server | WebSphere Application Server proxy server |
---|---|---|
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) | Yes | No |
Request URI rewriting | Yes | No |
Efficient static file serving | Yes | No1 |
Compression | Yes | Yes |
Response filtering | Yes | No2 |
SSL termination | Yes | Yes |
Cryptographic Accelerator3 | Yes | Yes4 |
FIPS | Yes | Yes |
Third-party/customer-written plug-ins | Yes | No |
Logging | Yes | Yes5 |
Custom Logging | Yes | No |
Disk caching | Yes | Yes |
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Table notes:
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