Tuning the heartbeat interval setting for failover detection

You can configure the amount of time between system checks for failed servers with the heartbeat interval setting. This setting applies to catalog servers only.

About this task

Configuring failover varies depending on the type of environment you are using. If you are using a stand-alone environment, you can configure failover with the command line. If you are using a WebSphere® Application Server Network Deployment environment, you must configure failover in the WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment administrative console.

Procedure

What to do next

When these settings are modified to provide short failover times, there are some system-tuning issues to be aware of. First, Java™ is not a real-time environment. It is possible for threads to be delayed if the JVM is experiencing long garbage collection times. Threads might also be delayed if the machine hosting the JVM is heavily loaded (due to the JVM itself or other processes running on the machine). If threads are delayed, heartbeats might not be sent on time. In the worst case, they might be delayed by the required failover time. If threads are delayed, false failure detections occur. The system must be tuned and sized to ensure that false failure detections do not happen in production. Adequate load testing is the best way to ensure this.

Note: The current version of eXtreme Scale supports WebSphere Real Time.