Hardware or Software Load Balancer

Hi all,
We're looking to have two OHS servers at the top layer which we then want to load balance using a DNS Alias. Does anyone have any recommendations or useful reading materials on choosing between software and hardware load balancers? I've seen and maintained Hyperion implementations that successfully using both, but would like to understand the pros/cons of each approach.
Also, does anyone know of any recommendations from Oracle on which approach with Hyperion / configuration recommendations when using Load balancers? The EPM High Availability guide 11.1.2.1 doesn't say much about load balancers sitting above the OHS layer
Thanks
Nick

Hi Nick,
The big problem with round-robin DNS is if one of your OHS nodes goes down every other user will head a bad URL. A hardware load balancer when setup properly will have much more intelligence and can sense if a site is down and automatically send all requests to the online node. Higher end hardware load balancers usually offer features like SSL Offloading and content compression.
This being said there are real costs for hardware load balancer which can run into the 10's of thousands of dollars if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You may also want to review the content available at: http://www.loadbalancing.org/
If you are looking for something in between round-robin DNS and a true hardware load balancer take a look at Linux LVS at: http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/ -- this does require a bit of linux knowledge.
Regards,
John A. Booth
http://www.metavero.com

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Weblogic cluster software load balancer

Hi,
We are currently using Weblogic domain as a Proxy Plug-In for High Availability test as it’s explained in this blog http://andrejusb.blogspot.com/2009/04/weblogic-load-balancing-for-oracle-adf.html.
Its working fine for POC project but what software load balancer would you recommended for production environment on Linux? (Assume that we don’t have a hardware load balancer).
- Oracle active-passive OHS web-tier clustering.
-Using Linux open source Linux Software(e.g. HAProxy and KeepAlived as explained here http://biemond.blogspot.com/2010/04/high-availability-load-balancer- for.html
-Using any other software load Balancer
I would appreciate if anybody can provide some recommendations/links etc.
Thanks
Alex

Hi Alex,
Yes you should never use HttpClusterServlet, not even for fun ;-)
We use mod_wl (Web Server Plug-In) for Apache for several customers and that works fine.
Check this:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/web.1111/e14395/toc.htm
Regards Peter

Software load balancer

Hi,
os platform= oracle linux
database = 11g 11.1.0.7
apps = 12.1.2
regarding choosing load balancer which load balancer is good for Ebusiness suite instance
Hardware level or software level
kibndly advice

If we want to go with hardware level do we have to do something with Apache loadbalancer or skip that step?Which configuration you are planning to go with? You still need to do configuration changes at the application tier nodes.
If we choose Hardware level load balancer its configuration has few steps compare to software level ?Going with hardware load balancer still requires many changes and configurations at the application tier nodes as well as the hardware load balancer and I would say the steps are not less comparing to software load balancer.
what is the major difference between hardware level and software levelI believe this is not answered in any of the docs/links referenced above, so please log a SR to get the correct/proper answer.
Thanks,
Hussein

Software load balancing in weblogic

Hi All,
we need to configure a Software load balancer for one of our evnironment as we will not be getting hardware load balancer for the same.
we have weblogic and soa (11.1.1.5) installed on one machine and we will create two managed server which will be in a cluster.
Please provide any pointer or input for configuring software load balancer for our requirement.
TIA,
Bob

Hi,
Have a look at OHS.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E14571_01/web.1111/e16435/oracle.htm
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E15586_01/web.1111/e10144/intro_ohs.htm
Regards,
Fabio

How to configure software load balancer for R12.1.3

Dear All,
I need to configure software load-balancer on application tiers and i need to know if its possible to have a software load-balancer in place of hardware load balancer if i need to route the load on two application nodes.
Thanks !

As we do not certify, nor support 3rd party loadbalancers we can not confirm that the Piranha loadbalancer will perform as expected with EBS. The basic minimum requirements or loadbalaning is that it has death detection, and session / cookie persistence We also typically require that a hardware loadbalancer is used. Internally we use F5 loadbalancers, and Cisco ACE.
What are the limitations of a software load balancer compared to hardware ? As mentioned above, your software balancer should has the capability of "death detection, and session/cookie persistence" -- More details can be found in (Implementing Load Balancing On Oracle E-Business Suite - Documentation For Specific Load Balancer Hardware [ID 727171.1]).
Oracle Web Cache can be used as a software load balancer (which is an Oracle product), but Oracle recommends you do not use it in production instances.
Thanks,
Hussein

HTTP logs not created when using software load balancer

This is my setup:
1. I have a server running a software load balancer - call it A
2. There are two servers clustered under A - call it X and Y
3. I am able to access the application deployed on X and Y through A.
Fail-over also works. Shutting down X when the application is up and running routes the requests to Y and vice-versa. All is well until this point.
Problem is:
Let us take server X.
$ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Apache/logs does not have an access log in it. (It
however has an error log.)
Access logs are not created when accessing the servers in the cluster (X and Y) through the load balancer URL.
However, when accessing the individual servers in the cluster (with their URLs), access logs are created.
Specifics on the setup:
1. A, X, Y - all three are OAS 10.1.3.2
2. All three are deployed on individual server machines
3. All three servers have one OC4J instance each running in them
4. The software load balancer used is from WebLogic 8.1sp5 - basically to create a *.war file that has the details of X and Y (servers in the cluster)
5. This *.war file is deployed on A
6. Server A, the one that has the software load balancer, DOES NOT have AS control. One of the other servers in the cluster does.
Has anybody encountered this problem before? Or is there anything wrong
with the setup? What is the resolution for the same?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

Thank you, Jacco. You are right in saying that the software load balancer does not route the request to Apache and hence the logs are not created.
While the logs are not critical to the component we are working on, was just wondering why they were not being created.
As regards your comment on FastCGI, there is a FastCGI directory created under $ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Apache/logs - but there is nothing in it. Neither do the error logs have any information pertaining to FastCGI.
Anyway, I am not going to worry about this issue anymore - may be sometime in the future will try to use a different software load balancer and see if it makes any difference.

Validation required on software load balancing

We have created software load balancing between two web servers with 80/20 load shared in SP 2013 farm configuration. How could we validate this is working as disired while user access the site. Is there any there any monitoring tool auilable to monitor
this.

Hi TanGrren,
Software loadbalancing, you mean NLB which come by dafault on windiows server?
if ther is any other third party software then they would have the option to show the load. (if possible please name the software which is being used)
If not i would rely on Perfmon (performance monitoring)and place some pointers on the URl and get the stats.
Satyam

Load balancing outbound requests from OAG

Hi,
I need to load balance outbound requests from OAG to a cluster of Application Servers (which expose some web services): do I need a hardware (or software) load balancer product? Isn't API Gateway able to do the job by himself?
Thanks.
Bye.
Roberto

Hi,
By adding a remote host you can achieve load balancing. So make up a "fake" host that should not exist just not to collide with any actual service, add that host as a remote host and then add the IP's in the list of the of load balancing. Us the fake host in your connection filter and the gateway will automatically replace it host with a correct IP from the load balancing list.

Load Balancing Forms Services with an effective healthcheck

I am in the process of configuring two forms 11.1.2 servers running with weblogic 10.3.5 with multiple forms applications clustered across both physical servers. We are looking to load balance to the various forms applications using a hardware load balancer. Can anyone comment on their experience with setting up effective application healthchecks using either hardware or software load balancers?
For example say that we have 3 applications clustered across 2 servers with the following
URLs:
http://server01:7777/forms/frmservlet?config=myapp1
http://server01:7777/forms/frmservlet?config=myapp2
http://server01:7777/forms/frmservlet?config=myapp3
http://server02:7777/forms/frmservlet?config=myapp1
http://server02:7777/forms/frmservlet?config=myapp2
http://server02:7777/forms/frmservlet?config=myapp3
We would need a checking mechanism on the load balancer that could tell if myapp2 was down on say server01 and therefore block traffic to that application yet keep traffic open for the other 2 apps on the same server.
A specific difficulty with forms is that when the database behind the application is down forms services will return an error message within a displayed error form. From the load balancer's point of view the forms services are "up". We need to find a way of detecting that the application is actually available and not just that the forms services themselves are available. To detect that the forms services are available we might normally use the status check:
http://server01:7777/forms/frmservlet?ifcmd=status
however this will only tell use the availability of the forms services on a physical server and not whether any actual applications are available.
I am aware that f5 do a BIGIP offering that includes some Oracle Forms specific components. Can anyone comment on how they have setup Oracle Forms healthchecks using various load balancing methods. In particular if a load balancer is limited to using WGET commands to check HTTP returned content is there a way of checking a forms application's availability and if not how have other people achieved an effective healthcheck?
Many thanks,
Philippe

Did you ever Get this to work?
I am having some problems trying to load balance with Oracle Forms, Discover and reports Oracle Application Server Release 10g (9.0.4.0.2) and I was wondering if you could help. Has any one ever got this to work consistently? We are an ERP product written mostly in forms (904) and are trying to implement are largest customer there performance issue so we need the load balancing to work. Will also accept other recommendation as cost effective as solutions.
Site 1:
A: SERVER
     Host as1.xyzco.local
     Version 10.1.2.0.2
     Installation Type Identity Management and Metadata Repository
     Oracle Home E:\oracle\inf_1012
     Farm as1db.xyzco.net
o     HTTP_Server
o     Internet Directory
o     OC4J_SECURITY
o     Single Sign-On:orasso
o     Management
B SERVER
     Host as2. xyzco.local
     Version 9.0.4.0.2
     Installation Type Business Intelligence and Forms
     Oracle Home E:\oracle\mid_904
     Farm as2db. xyzco.net
o     Discoverer
o     Forms
o     home
o     HTTP_Server
o     OC4J_BI_Forms
o     Reports Server
o     Web Cache
o     Management
C SERVER
     Host as3. xyzco.local
     Version 9.0.4.0.2
     Installation Type Business Intelligence and Forms Discoverer and Reports
     Oracle Home E:\oracle\mid_904
     Farm as2db. xyzco.net
o      Discoverer
o     Forms
o     home
o     HTTP_Server
o     OC4J_BI_Forms
o     Reports Server
o     Web Cache
o     Management
All servers Are:
     Windows 2003 Standard Server with current service packs
     Xeon Dual Processor with 4GB ram
     Raid 0 drives 2 for OS and 2 for Oracle
Daniel Brody
[email protected]

Load Balancing & Fault tolerance in Oracle Apps

Hello
I am pretty new to Oracle Apps and Oracle 9iAS
We are trying to asked to find out the ways of deplying load balancing and fault tolerance in Oracle Apps
I have gone thru the following articles of metalink and some more from google
Configuring Web Cache as a Load Balancer for Application Servers
Create new middle tier node in existing Apps 11i environment using cloning and then load balance
Integrating and using Web Cache with Forms 9i for Load Balancing
Running Multiple OC4J Instances From a Single Install of 9iAS 1.0.2.2
LOAD BALANCING ORACLE APPLICATIONS ON UNIX
Load Balancing in 11i
OC4J Clustering Setup
OC4J Load Balancing for Forms 9i
Setting up 11i E-Business suite using a hardware load balancer
Sharing an APPL_TOP in Oracle Applications 11i
In Oracle Apps Concepts pdf, found that
Load balancing occurs when there are multiple installations of web server, forms server, reports server, concurrent manager server etc
Lets consider forms server component of middle tier
Can there be multiple INSTANCES of forms server within SINGLE INSTALLATION ???
If it has to be MULTIPLE INSTALLATIONS, then it will require multiple physical machines
What is software load balancing then ???
Also read that
Oracle 9i AS instance is combition of Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) and one or more instances of Oracle9iAS Container for J2EE (OC4J)
Thus software load balancing can be implemented for Web server component of middle tier using multiple instances of OC4J ???
Forms metrix server configuration is hardware load balancing ??
What about Oracle9iAS Web Cache clustering ??
Please clarify the doubts and suggest me the way
Thanks a lot

dear all can any one help me on the following;
We want to install Oracle Apps 11.5.9 on 4 IBM AIX 5L boxes, the first node
will hold the database , concurrent and Admin Tiers. as for the other 3 nodes
it will hold the Forms/Web Tiers and we need to use forms metrics for load
balancing taking into consideration that we can't use Shared APPL_TOP. we tried
to find the way how to install and configure this solution but all the
documents are talking aboout the concept only and this concept is applicable.
We need the exact steps on how do the installation either using rapidwiz or any
thing else
fadi

Virtual Hosts for Load Balancing

Hi all,
So I have two identical servers, that have SOA Suite installed pointing to the same database. (RHEL 4) I have configured the mod_oc4j.conf file for round robin, and then I created a virtual host on the httpd.conf file to point to the load balance hardware.
It worked! But with a slight issue. The Load Balance server is orasoaqa.tmpw.net:7777, which opens the main Application Server page. However, when I click on BPEL console, or ESB, it continues using the orasoaqa.tmpw.net:7777 virtual, which of course, breaks even trying to login.
What am I missing here? Here's the entry I added to mod_oc4j.conf:
Oc4jSelectMethod roundrobin:local
Here's the entry I added to the httpd.conf on server 1:
Port 7777
Listen 7777
NameVirtualHost XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:7777
<VirtualHost orasoaqaapp101.ma.tmpw.net:7777>
ServerName orasoaqa.tmpw.net
ServerAlias orasoaqaapp101.ma.tmpw.net
Port 7777
</VirtualHost>
and on server 2:
Port 7777
Listen 7777
NameVirtualHost XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:7777
<VirtualHost orasoaqaapp102.ma.tmpw.net:7777>
ServerName orasoaqa.tmpw.net
ServerAlias orasoaqaapp102.ma.tmpw.net
Port 7777
</VirtualHost>
Yes, the port for Application Server and the port on the Load Balancer are exactly the same, I hope this isn't the issue.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Message was edited by:
CooperHawkes

Seeing that you have an external load balancer available, you really should not be trying software load balancing. Windows NLBS is a software based load balancing and is not really dependent on the physical/virtual hosting of the OS. There are certain gotchas
w.r.t the NLB modes since they depend on network protocols such as arp, propagation of MAC addresses and usage of the MAC in the L2 routing tables of network devices.
You should be taking the help of the cloud service provider as ONLY they would have an understanding of their underlying networking infrastructure such as VLANS. addressing, routing rules and such.
You could also refer to the VMware support forum for KB's such as
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006580
Most importantly, NLBS is a base OS related service and you're more likely to get a response in the Windows Server Forum. In the specific case of BizTalk, the Windows NLB is only used for hosting the out of process services such as those associated with
HTTP/s Receive, orchestration published as schemas, web services (asmx) and/or WCF endpoints.
Regards.

Network Load Balancing and failover for AFP Sharing

Dear all,
Somebody kindly teach me to use round robin DNS to perform the network load balancing, it's success but not the failover.
I have 4 xserve and want to do the load balancing and failover at the same time.
I have read the IP failover document and setup it successfully, but anyone know is it possible to do the IP failover for more than 2 server?
For example, 4 server serving the AFP service at the same time, maybe I have 1 more extra server to do the IP failover for thoese 4 servers.
As I know, IP failover require Firewire as the heartbeat detection. But one xserve only have 2 firewire ports. May I setting up the IP failover only by a ethernet port and an IP address? does it possible to detect and failover to any server after server down has been detected?
I believe load balancer maybe the best solution but its cost is too high.
Thanks any advance!
Karllee

well, u have 2 options here
software load balancing
request comes it foo.com -> ws7u2 hosting foo.com is configured to run as reverse proxy . this server sends any incoming requests to one of the four back end web server 7 handling your incoming request
hardware load balancing (this you need to invest)
request comes to hardware load balancer who responds for foo.com -> sends requests to four ws7 server hosting your application
you could try out how software load balancing works out for you before you invest in hardware load balancing
here is more instruction on configuring ws7 + reverse proxy (software load configuration)
- install ws7 on foo.com
- create a new configuration (choose port 80, disable java

Load balancing v/s Clustering with BOXI enterprise premium

We are planning to install Businessobjects enterprise premium on windows2008 server (64 bit) and we are going to use oracle database. my question is
"Can we set up Crystal reports and businessobjects (web intelligence) both either on clustered environment or load balancer ? "
If not, can you please let me know what is the best option ?

Oh. All BOE (this includes Crystal) servers support clustering (and software load balancing via corba). Only the input and output FRS do not support load balancing. i.e. while you can have mulitple input/output FRS, only one of each is active at a time. The others are passive and will only be used if the active FRS is unavailable.
As an aside, if I remember correctly, a BOE Premium license is required for clustering.
So, in essence, you do not need a hardware load balancer to support load balancing for both Crystal and Webi.

Load balancing and cluster

Please help on this,
Steps I have created
1. Install Portal on node A
2. Create j2ee cluster instance on node B pointing to node A
3. Software load balance both the nodes
Even after load balancing the two portal nodes,if I shutdown Portal node A dispatcher,then the portal node B dispatcher will automatically shutdown, since the portal node B is a j2ee cluster for Portal node A.In this case how the URL will work from node B ? Please explain

I did portal install on server A. I started dispatcher and I am logging with the URL http://ServerA:52100/irj on server A. And I did install of J2EE cluster on another server called ServerB. I started Server B's dispatcher. When I am starting Server B's dispatcher in Server A I am able to see another time Element joined.The URL for the serverB is http://ServerB:52100/irj. When I created users on Server A, I am able to see the users on Server B.When server B goes down or if dispatcher of B stopped even then Server A is working because it is independent install. But when the Server A goes down which is the main server then the additional J2EE cluster node that is Server B is going down automatically because it is dependent on Server A. But I want to make it as complete high availability of failover,means if Server A goes down it should fail over to Server B and if Server B goes down it should fail over to Server A. I understood we can do software load balancing from windows level or hardware load balancing to get the high availability. But now with my existing installs, I want to make failover to work, please suggest me which is the best way to do without changing any of the existing installs.
My environment is :
Operating system: Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
Data base: SQL 2000(Already configured as cluster)
Portal: EP6.0 SP2

FRM-92102 when accessing a form using a Load Balancer

Greetings.
We have two oracle application servers version 10.1.2.0.2 on windows 2003 running forms and reports. When just one a server is running everithing works fine, but when I start the second server the clients receive the message "FRM-92102 : A network error has occurred.The Forms Client has attempted to re-establish its connection to the Server 5 times without success.Please check the network connection and try again later" when the first form is called. In our coniguration the F5 Load Balancer is redirecting requests to the Apache ports in both Oas Machines, we are not using the webcache port. I read the note "FRM-92102 When Using A Software Load Balancer With Forms [ID 465583.1]" but this note applies when webcache is used. Our LBR is set using "insert cookie" persitent mechanism.
I have the following questions:
What configuration is needed in OAS files in order to use a LBR and avoid the FRM-92102 error?
How can I debug or trace FRM-92102 issues?
Thanks!
Ramiro Ortiz.

FRM-92102 is the result of the client not getting a response from the server (mid tier). This generally means only one of a couple of things:
1. The mid tier which parented the Forms session is not responding. This could be because it is overloaded, the web server (OHS or WebCache) is failing, or something else is preventing the client from getting a response.
2. Client requests are being routed to the wrong mid-tier server. This is usually the result of improper load balancer configuration or an LB failure. However, generally in this case FRM-92101 would result. If you are using an unpatch 10.1.2 installation, as I believe you are (10.1.2.0) then seeing either error may be possible.
Regarding the note that discusses using Oracle WebCache for load balancing, regardless of whether you are using an Oracle product or hardware or whatever for loadbalancing, the same concept will apply. The load balancer must have session binding enabled. Understanding whether or not this is the problem should be fairly easy to determine. Simply shutdown one server. If everything works correctly, restart the second server. If the problem now occurs, you can likely assume you have a session binding issue and should likely refer to the load balancer's documentation or their Support group.
Also, important to understand is that if the load balancer is designed to alter the header information in any way, the likelihood of failing Forms sessions is high. Forms is expecting very specific information in the header exchange. Some intermediate servers (load balancers, ssl accelerators, firewalls, etc) have been known to intentionally or unintentionally alter the header. Again, contact the vendor.
If you are seeing that the client console is reporting 5 retry attempts, yet you have not set "networkRetries" in formsweb.cfg, this often suggests a critical tcp/ip failure. Often, but maybe not always, the result of a damaged header or other misconfiguration or failure outside of Forms.

Hardware or Software Load Balancer

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