What is work load management

Workload management is the concept of sharing requests across multiple instances of a resource. Workload management techniques are implemented expressly for providing scalability and availability within a system. These techniques allow the system to serve more concurrent requests. Workload management allows for better use of resources by distributing load more evenly.

Components that are overworked, and therefore, perhaps a potential bottleneck, can be routed around with workload management algorithms. Workload management techniques also provide higher resiliency by routing requests around failed components to duplicate copies of that resource.

In WebSphere Application Server, workload management is achieved by sharing requests across one or more application servers, each running a copy of the Web application. In more complex topologies, workload management is embedded in load balancing technologies that can be used in front of Web servers.

Workload management (WLM) is a WebSphere facility to provide load balancing and affinity between nodes in a WebSphere clustered environment. WLM can be an important facet of performance. WebSphere uses WLM to send requests to alternate members of the cluster if the current member is too busy to process the request in a timely fashion. WebSphere will route concurrent requests from a user to the same application server to maintain session state.