Sticky sessions and Load Balancing in WL Clusters

Question

We are using iPlanet Web Server 4.1 with WebLogic App Server; and would like
to implement load balancing with sticky sessions and in-memory state
replication.
The documentation in Weblogic says that -
When using in-memory state replication, your WebLogic Server Cluster must
live behind one or more proxy servers. The proxy servers are smart enough to
send servlet requests, belonging to the same HTTP session, back to the same
server in the cluster that holds the session data.
(Ref: http://www.weblogic.com/docs51/cluster/setup.html)
Does this mean that the sticky session configuration has to be done on the
iPlanet Web Server itself ?
Also, if WebLogic is used as the Web server, does WebLogic provide any
support for sticky sessions?
Any help, suggestions or links to useful info are welcome.
Regards,
Milind.

Answer 1

Mike,
im curious as to why you would recomend using weblogic as a web server in 6.1?
I would not for the following reasons:
- it costs 10x more per cpu list
- it doesnt support hardware accell cards (afaik, please let me know if this has
changed)
iplanet is really good a serving up static html and gif's, especially in ssl if you
have a hardware accell card. So if you have a site with lots of graphics and you use
ssl a lot, I think its still a better solution.
-Joel
Mike Reiche wrote:
You get sticky round-robin by default.
You need to have session tracking turned on (i think it is on by default). You
need to have the WL plugin configured in iPlanet.
When WL creates an httpSession, it writes a cookie (or rewrites the URL) back
to the browser. On subsequent requests, the browser sends the cookie and iPlanet
plug-in directs the request to the correct WL instance based on the ip address
of the WL server embedded in the cookie.
If you are using WLS 6.1, I would recommend using it as a web server (and not
using iPlanet). I imagine that it supports stickly load balancing as well.
Mike
Joel Nylund <[email protected]> wrote:
you get round robin by default, if you want a different scheme you can
use one
of the other 3 options (weight, random or parameter).
-Joel
I think weight can be set in weblogic properties. I havent used any other
than
round robin.
Milind Prabhu wrote:
We are using iPlanet Web Server 4.1 with WebLogic App Server; and wouldlike
to implement load balancing with sticky sessions and in-memory state
replication.
The documentation in Weblogic says that -
When using in-memory state replication, your WebLogic Server Clustermust
live behind one or more proxy servers. The proxy servers are smartenough to
send servlet requests, belonging to the same HTTP session, back tothe same
server in the cluster that holds the session data.
(Ref: http://www.weblogic.com/docs51/cluster/setup.html)
Does this mean that the sticky session configuration has to be doneon the
iPlanet Web Server itself ?
Also, if WebLogic is used as the Web server, does WebLogic provideany
support for sticky sessions?
Any help, suggestions or links to useful info are welcome.
Regards,
Milind.