Load balancing options

You can specify the load balancing option that the plug-in uses when sending requests to the various application servers associated with that Web server



This field corresponds to the LoadBalanceWeight element in the plugin-cfg.xml file. We have two options to choose from for the load balancing

• Round robin (default): When using this algorithm, the plug-in selects, at random, a cluster member from which to start. The first successful browser request will be routed to this cluster member and then its weight is decremented by one. New browser requests are then sent round robin to the other application servers and, subsequently, the weight for each application server is decremented by one. The spreading of the load is equal between application servers until one application server reaches a weight of zero. From then on, only application servers without a weight higher than zero will receive routed requests. The only exception to this pattern is when a cluster member is added or restarted.
  


• RandomRequests are passed to cluster members randomly. Weights are not taken into account as in the round robin algorithm. The only time the application servers are not chosen randomly is when there are requests with associated sessions. When the random setting is used, cluster member election does not take into account where the last request was handled. This means that a new request could be handled by the same cluster member as the last request.