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Load balancing spreads tasks among all available processors. It is important in any system, and is a key to processing capacity and scalability. In IBM Cognos BI, load balancing means ensuring that processing requests are distributed appropriately among all the available IBM Cognos BI servers. IBM Cognos BI does this automatically, but you can configure load balancing as well.
This extra step can be avoided by either implementing load balancing without an external load balancing mechanism, or by using a router or other load balancing mechanism.
This ensures that the processing capacity of the IBM Cognos BI servers is directed toward serving report requests rather than load balancing requests. You can also achieve load balancing by having gateways direct all traffic to an IBM Cognos BI server computer that is dedicated to dispatching, as shown in the following diagram.
Figure 3. Load balancing by configuring gateways to direct traffic to a dedicated IBM Cognos BI
server used for dispatching This configuration also removes dispatching load from the IBM Cognos BI servers. However, it does require separate dispatching computers.
between the browser and Tier 1: Web Server between Tier 1: Web Server and Tier 2: IBM Cognos BI Server
You can use an external load-balancing mechanism to distribute requests to dispatchers across all available servers, as shown in the following diagram. Figure 4. Using external load-balancing mechanisms to distribute requests to dispatchers across
all available servers You can also use routers with multiple gateways, as shown in the following diagram.
Figure 5. Using external load-balancing mechanisms to use routers with multiple gateways
An ideal load-balancing mechanism provides the same capacity awareness as an IBM Cognos BI dispatcher. To ensure that requests are not distributed by both an external load-balancing mechanism and the dispatcher, you must configure the dispatchers to not use their built-in load balancing for low affinity requests. This ensures that requests remain at the server where the hardware load balancer directed them.