Setting up Site Selector

Set up the Site Selector component in production environments and realistic test environments.

Before you begin

Before you set up the Site Selector server, you must be the root user (for AIX®, HP-UX, Linux, or Solaris systems) or the Administrator (for Windows systems).

About this task

You need an unresolvable fully qualified host name to use as a site name for a group of servers that you set up. The site name is the name that the clients use to access your site (such as www.yourcompany.com). Site Selector load-balances traffic for this site name among the group of servers by using DNS

Procedure

  1. Start the server function by typing ssserver at the command prompt. A default configuration file, default.cfg, automatically loads when you start ssserver. If you decide to save the configuration in the default.cfg file, everything that is saved in this file automatically loads the next time ssserver starts.
  2. Start the name server by typing sscontrol nameserver start at a command prompt. Optionally, start the name server by using the bindaddress keyword to bind only to the specified address.
  3. Define a site name and set site name options. Site Selector balances the requests that are sent for the site name to the corresponding servers configured to it.

    The site name is an unresolvable host name that the client requests. The site name must be a fully qualified domain name (for example, www.dnsdownload.com). When a client requests this site name, one of the server IP addresses associated with the site name is returned.

    To define a site name, issue the following command:
    sscontrol sitename add sitename
    sscontrol sitename set sitename option value
  4. Define load balanced server workstations. The server workstations run the applications that you want to load balance. The server is the symbolic name or dotted decimal address of the server machine. To define a server on the site name from step 3, issue the following command:
    sscontrol server add sitename@server

    Define more than one server under a site name to perform load balancing.

  5. Optional: Start the manager function (optional). The manager function enhances load balancing. Before starting the manager function, ensure that the metric server is installed in all the load-balanced machines.
    To start the manager, issue the following command:
    sscontrol advisor start http sitename@port
  6. Optional: Start the advisor function (optional). The advisors give the manager more information about the ability of the load balanced server machines to respond to requests. An advisor is specific to a protocol. The Load Balancer supplies many advisors. For example, to start the HTTP advisor for a specific site name, issue the following command:
    sscontrol advisor start  http sitename@port 
  7. Optional: Define system metric (optional).
  8. Set site name proportions as required. If you start advisors, you might modify the proportion of importance that is given to advisor (port) information that is included in the load balancing decisions. To set the site name proportions, issue the following command:
    sscontrol sitename set sitename proportions
    Read the Tuning the proportion of importance that is given to status information to learn how the manager uses ratios to determine the importance of status information that is coming from advisors and Load Balancer.

What to do next

Set up the Metric Server on all machines that Site Selector is load balancing. Read the Getting advice with Metric Server topic to learn how to use Metric Server with the Site Selector component.
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Last updated: April 16, 2014 11:59 AM EDT
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