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7.2 Managing workloads

7.2 Managing workloads

Workload management optimizes the distribution of work-processing tasks in the WebSphere Application Server environment. Incoming work requests are distributed to the application servers and other objects that can most effectively process the requests. Workload management also provides failover when servers are not available.

Workload management is most effective when used in systems that contain servers on multiple machines. It also can be used in systems that contain multiple servers on a single, high-capacity machine. In either case, it enables the system to make the most effective use of the available computing resources.

Implementing workload management

WebSphere Application Server, Advanced Edition implements workload management as follows:

  1. By using clones and models. Multiple copies, or clones, of an object can be created from a template known as a model. Clones and models are most commonly used to create copies of entire application servers, but can be made for any component of a WebSphere application.
  2. Enterprise beans and servlets have additional steps for implementing workload management.
    • For enterprise beans, by using workload management-enabled Java Archive (JAR) files. These JAR files can be created by using either the Administrative console or the wlmjar utility.
    • For servlets, by using servlet redirection to route client requests to remote servlet clones.

Benefits of workload management

Workload management provides the following benefits to WebSphere applications:

  • It balances client workloads, allowing processing tasks to be distributed according to the capacities of the different machines in the system.
  • It provides failover capability by redirecting client requests if one or more servers is unable to process them. This improves the availability of applications and administrative services.
  • It enables systems to be scaled up to serve a higher client load than provided by the basic configuration. With cloning and modeling, additional instances of servers, servlets, and other objects can easily be added to the configuration.
  • It enables servers to be transparently maintained and upgraded while applications remain available for users.
  • It centralizes the administration of servers and other objects.

Interoperability between WebSphere Application Server versions

All resources that participate in workload management must be running under the same version of WebSphere Application Server. For instance, application servers running under version 3.5.x of WebSphere Application cannot participate in workload management with application servers running under version 3.0.x.

Go to previous article: Server affinity Go to next article: Workload management for enterprise beans and application servers

 

 
Go to previous article: Server affinity Go to next article: Workload management for enterprise beans and application servers