Database sharing and load balancing for portal farms
There are unique considerations for database sharing and load balancing in a portal farm configuration.
Database sharing
If the independent server installation approach is used for building a farm, all database domains can be shared except for the release domain. Every farm instance requires its own release database, or more specifically, every application server profile requires its own release database. In the case of a shared filesystem portal farm, all database domains can be shared because the application server configuration to which the release data is bound is also shared.
Load balancing
Maintaining affinity between a client and a particular farm server instance is important, both for efficient caching and performance, as well as to ensure proper login function. During the login process, several request steps are required to the same server. Moving between servers during the login process can cause the login to fail.There are many commercially available network appliances that support load balancing across servers with affinity. WebSphere Portal comes with the IBM HTTP Server whose application plugin supports load balancing across servers as well. Load balancing with the application server plugin assumes an application server cluster is in use, so to make use of this technique requires some extra configuration. See "Setting up a portal farm" for information about how to set up the HTTP Server to serve the portal farm.
Parent
Portal farm considerations
Set up farm instances as unique installations