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Load Balancing

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.

Automatic Load Balancing


In a distributed environment, IBM Cognos BI balances request load automatically. By default, as servers are added to the system, each server dispatcher processes the same number of requests. If there is more than one instance of a given service, the dispatcher distributes requests to all the enabled instances of the service that are registered in Content Manager.

Configuring Load Balancing


While automatic load balancing may be appropriate when hardware resources are identical throughout a server topology, it may not be ideal in environments containing a mix of hardware resources with different capacity characteristics. In a hardware environment that contains servers with varying degrees of processing capacity, it is desirable to balance the processing load according the server's capacity. In IBM Cognos BI, you can set process capacity settings using server administration options. For example, if you have two servers, one of which has twice the capacity of the other, you might assign the more powerful server a weight of two and the less powerful server a weight of one. IBM Cognos BI then submits twice as many requests to the more powerful server. For more information about IBM Cognos BI dispatcher settings, see the Administration and Security Guide.

Load Balancing Dispatchers


Without a software or hardware load balancing mechanism, each IBM Cognos BI gateway is aware of only one dispatcher, and distributes all requests to that dispatcher. The dispatcher then distributes the requests among IBM Cognos BI servers. Because every request initially goes through the same dispatcher on one server, the load on that server is increased. An extra step is needed to automatically balance the load, as shown in the following diagram.

Figure 1. Load balancing dispatchers

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.

Load Balancing Without an External Mechanism


Since gateway servers often have less load than IBM Cognos BI servers, you may achieve better performance by configuring dispatchers together with the gateways, as shown in the following diagram. Figure 2. Load balancing by configuring dispatchers with gateways

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.

Using External Load-Balancing Mechanisms


You can use external load-balancing mechanisms, such as routers, to further distribute tasks in IBM Cognos BI. Load-balancing routers can be used in either or both of these locations:

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.

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