Web portal network

Figure 1 shows a Web portal network designed to support a heavy volume of traffic while providing each client with personalized content. To minimize the processing load on the various servers, no part of the network carries SSL traffic. Because the portal does not deliver sensitive data, security is not an important issue. It is important for the databases containing client IDs, passwords, and settings to remain moderately secure and uncorrupted, but this requirement does not impair the performance of the rest of the Web site.

All client requests pass through the firewall to a Dispatcher that balances the network load across a cluster of proxy servers with active caches that act as surrogate servers for the Web servers. Metric servers are colocated with the proxy servers to provide load-balancing data to the Dispatcher.

The actual dynamic Web site is a cluster of application servers that generate ESI fragments that are passed to the proxy servers for assembly. Because of the reduced security concerns, each application server performs all necessary functions for constructing the Web site. All application servers are identical. If one application server goes out of service, the session server can route requests to the other servers, providing high availability for the entire site. This configuration also allows for rapid escalation of the Web site if excessive traffic occurs, for example, the hosting of a special event by the portal. Additional proxy servers and application servers can quickly be configured into the site.

All static content, such as image files and boilerplate text is stored on separate Web servers, allowing it to be updated as necessary without risking corruption to the more complex application servers.

The following scenerio includes both Load Balancer and Caching Proxy.

IMPORTANT: Caching Proxy is available on all Edge component installations except for installations that run on Itanium 2 or AMD Opteron 64-bit processors.

Figure 1. Web portal
This graphic depicts a sample Web portal

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Timestamp icon Last updated: March 23, 2018 0:18
File name: portal.html