Set up the Site Selector component in production environments
and realistic test environments.
Before you begin
Before you set up the Site Selector server, you must be
the root user (for AIX®, HP-UX, Linux, or Solaris systems) or the
Administrator (for Windows systems).
About this task
You need an unresolvable fully qualified host name to use
as a site name for a group of servers that you set up. The site name
is the name that the clients use to access your site (such as
www.yourcompany.com).
Site Selector load-balances traffic for this site name among the group
of servers by using DNS
Procedure
- Start the server function by typing ssserver at
the command prompt. A default configuration file, default.cfg,
automatically loads when you start ssserver. If
you decide to save the configuration in the default.cfg file, everything
that is saved in this file automatically loads the next time ssserver starts.
- Start the name server by typing sscontrol nameserver
start at a command prompt. Optionally, start
the name server by using the bindaddress keyword
to bind only to the specified address.
- Define a site name and set site name options. Site
Selector balances the requests that are sent for the site name to
the corresponding servers configured to it.
The site name is an
unresolvable host name that the client requests. The site name must
be a fully qualified domain name (for example, www.dnsdownload.com).
When a client requests this site name, one of the server IP addresses
associated with the site name is returned.
To define a site
name, issue the following command:
sscontrol sitename add sitename
sscontrol sitename set sitename option value
- Define load balanced server workstations. The
server workstations run the applications that you want to load balance.
The server is the symbolic name or dotted decimal address of the server machine.
To define a server on the site name from step 3, issue the following
command:
sscontrol server add sitename@server
Define
more than one server under a site name to perform load balancing.
- Optional: Start the manager function (optional). The manager function enhances load balancing. Before starting
the manager function, ensure that the metric server is installed in
all the load-balanced machines.
To start the manager, issue the
following command:
sscontrol advisor start http sitename@port
- Optional: Start the advisor function (optional). The advisors give the manager more information about the
ability of the load balanced server machines to respond to requests.
An advisor is specific to a protocol. The Load Balancer supplies many
advisors. For example, to start the HTTP advisor for a specific site
name, issue the following command:
sscontrol advisor start http sitename@port
- Optional: Define system metric (optional).
- Set site name proportions as required. If you
start advisors, you might modify the proportion of importance that
is given to advisor (port) information that is included in the load
balancing decisions. To set the site name proportions, issue the following
command:
sscontrol sitename set sitename proportions
Read
the Tuning the proportion of importance that is given to status information
to learn how the manager uses ratios to determine the importance of
status information that is coming from advisors and Load Balancer.
What to do next
Set up the Metric Server on all machines that Site Selector
is load balancing. Read the Getting advice with Metric Server topic
to learn how to use Metric Server with the Site Selector component.