Overview: Load Balancer

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Self help information for Edge Components is available on the Technote database from the WebSphere Application Server support Web site.

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For information on how to perform Load Balancer tasks, click How do I? in the navigation area to the left. To find information by keyword, select the Index tab.

Load Balancer is an administration and configuration tool that provides dynamic load balancing, scalability, and high availability for servers on the Internet or on your intranet.

The five major components of Load Balancer are:

  • Dispatcher - provides load balancing for TCP and UDP applications. Dispatcher balances the load on servers within a local area network or wide area network using several weights and measurements that are dynamically set.

    Content-based routing (without Caching Proxy) is also available on the Dispatcher component to load balance incoming client requests, based on Web page content using specified rule types, to HTTP servers.

  • Content Based Routing (CBR) - works with Caching Proxy to load balance incoming client requests, based on Web page content using specified rule types, to HTTP or HTTPS servers.

    Note: The Content Based Routing (CBR) component is available on all supported platforms except those running a 64-bit JVM on Itanium 2, AMD Opteron, or PowerPC 64-bit processors.

  • Site Selector - balances the load on servers within a wide area network (WAN) using measurements and weights that are gathered from the Metric Server component running on those servers.

  • Cisco CSS Controller - uses Load Balancer technology to provide real-time load balancing information to the Cisco Content Services Switch.

  • Nortel Alteon Controller - uses Load Balancer technology to provide server weights dynamically to the Nortel Alteon family of Web switches.