Horizontal scaling with clusters
Horizontal scaling exists when the members of an appserver cluster are located across multiple physical machines. This lets a single WebSphere application span several machines, yet still present a single logical image. This configuration is illustrated in Figure 3-8.
Figure 3-8 Horizontal scaling with cluster topology
The HTTP server distributes requests to cluster member appservers on the application server nodes.
The WebSphere Load Balancer component of IBM WAS Network Deployment V5.1, which can distribute client HTTP requests, can be combined with clustering to reap the benefits of both types of scaling. See 3.8.1, Horizontal scaling with IP sprayer for a description of this configuration.
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