Understanding the manager report
 Product documentation
 
Abstract
The manager function of Load Balancer calculates a weight for each server. These weights are used to determine how many connections a server should receive as compared with the other servers in the same cluster and port configuration. Understanding the manager report is critical to understanding how the network traffic is distributed.
 
 
Content
The manager report contains a list of each cluster, port, and server that is defined to that cluster:port combination. Each server shows two weights, now and new, and four columns that are used to calculate the weight:
  • Active connections (ACTV)
  • New connections (NEWC)
  • Port Load (PORT)
  • System load (SYS)

Each of the four columns is assigned a percentage that is used to calculate the weight for the server. The percentages are set with the cluster set proportion command.

The number of active connections and new connections are determined based upon the number of connections that the executor has forwarded within the last cycle of the last manager function. The manager cycle is two seconds, by default. The manager function returns the following values for each server:
  • Active connections (ACTV) - Active connections are TCP connections that are closed at the start of the manager cycle.
  • New connections (NEWC) - New connections represent the increase in total connections from the start of the manager cycle to the start of the last manager cycle.
  • Port Load (PORT) - The port load is the value that is obtained from an advisor that is defined on this cluster:port combination. If an advisor is not started, the port load is always zero. When an advisor is defined, the port load typically represents the number of milliseconds for the advisor to receive a response from the server.
  • System load (SYS) - The system load represents the value that is returned from the metric server. If metrics have not been added for this cluster:port combination, the system load is zero (0). When metrics are defined, the system load is a value in between -1 and 100, which represents the status of the server. 100 is very busy and zero (0) is idle.

By default, only the active connections and new connections are considered when calculating the weight of the server. When an advisor is started, the proportion for the port load is set to 1% so that the port load is used in the weight calculation. Similarly, when a metric is added the proportion for the system load is set to 1%.


Port load

When the port load is shown as -1, the advisor did not receive a successful response to its query. Increase the log level and log size for the advisor to investigate why the server did not respond.

If the server never responds to the connection request, complete the following steps:
  1. Ensure that you can successfully ping the server from the Load Balancer machine.
  2. Verify that the server application is started and listening on the port that is defined. The server should be listening on the wildcard address (0.0.0.0), or both the cluster IP address and the real server IP address to successfully respond to the advisor requests.

If the server responds to the connection, then it might be responding to the query in a manner that is different from what Load Balancer is expecting to see. Check the advisorresponse string that is defined to ensure it matches what the server has transmitted. This scenario applies to both http and https advisors.


System load

If the system load shows -1, Load Balancer cannot communicate with the metric server on the back-end machine. Ensure Load Balancer keys are properly distributed to the server, that the server can be pinged from the Load Balancer, and that metric server is started on the machine.

If the problem persists, complete the following steps:
  1. Edit the script for the metric server on the back-end machine and increase both the log level and log size.
  2. Restart the metric server.
  3. Increase the the log size and the log level for the metric monitor at the Load Balancer.
  4. Examine the log files on both the Load Balancer machine and the back-end machine to determine why communication is failing.


Configuring server weights

Under normal circumstances, Load Balancer uses all of the values that have proportions that are not zero to calculate the new weight. For example, if the proporations are 40 40 20 0, the active connections and new connections are 40% of the weight calculation each and the port load is 20%.

As an example, assume the manager function returns the following values:

             ACTV      NEWC      PORT      SYS
Server1       50        200        25        0
Server2       25        100        50        0


The initial weight calculations will be:

Server1 = .40(50) + .40(200) + .2(25) = 20 + 80 + 5 = 105

Server2 = .40(25) + .40(100) + .2(50) = 10 + 40 + 10 = 60

The intial weights are scaled to be proportional to the weightbound for the cluster:port. By default, the weightbound is 10. Thus, in the previous example, the final weights are :

Server1 = (105/165) * 10 = 6

Server2 = ( 60/165) * 10 = 4

Note: Weights are rounded to the nearest whole number.

The calculated weight is shown as the NEW weight in the manager report. The weight is only pushed to the executor function if it exceeds the sensitivity level that is configured for the cluster:port combination. The NOW weight represents the weight that is obtained from the executor at the start of this manager cycle.

If the port load or the system load is -1, and the respective proportion for the port or system column is greater than 0, the calculated weight is zero (0). Zero (0) indicates that the server is not active and new requests are not sent to the server.

If you quiesce a server, you will see that the weight is also shown as zero (0), but the port load is positive if the server is still online. If a quiesced server goes offline, the port load is -1.

If a user issues a "server down" function on a server to prevent Load Balancer from sending requests to that server, the weight is -1 regardless of the value for the port load and system load.
 
 
Original publication date
2007/4/3
 
Cross Reference information
Segment Product Component Platform Version Edition
Application Servers Runtimes for Java Technology Java SDK
 
 


Document Information


Product categories: Software > Application Servers > Distributed Application & Web Servers > WebSphere Application Server > Edge Component
Operating system(s): Windows
Software version: 6.1
Software edition:
Reference #: 7009573
IBM Group: Software Group
Modified date: Apr 6, 2007