Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 1 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Mark Nesson, Vashti Ragoonath June, 2008

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 2 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Overview  WebFOCUS installations supports hundreds, even thousands, of users. Today, it’s becoming more and more difficult to secure skilled systems administrators to manage systems: So what’s the answer  We need a self-managing or autonomic solution that will deliver service 24 hours a day, seven days a week An autonomic system must be:  ■ Self-Aware – The system must know what resources it has available, and how these resources are functioning  ■ Self-Healing – The system must be able to use its awareness to correct problems in the delivery of service  ■ Self-Optimizing – The system must be continuously adjusting its resources to keep within the limits of performance needed

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 3 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise WebFOCUS Workload Distribution  WebFOCUS contains an autonomic server called CLM (Cluster Load Manager) that has all three characteristics.  Self Aware because it:  Knows which servers are running and it continuously measures their response time  Monitors all of the servers within the cluster and provides a central point of management through its own Console  CLM also maintains metadata describing the capacity of each computer and the amount of memory available to the servers  It starts up the servers when it needs to and begins to monitor their performance

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 4 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise WebFOCUS CLM Self Healing because:  It has the ability to bring servers up and down automatically  It has the ability to monitor the cluster operation at a central console resulting in less complexity and improved performance

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 5 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise WebFOCUS CLM Self Optimizing because:  The CLM manages every instance of WebFOCUS. Load balancing is dynamic. Should the load increase to the point that response times cannot be maintained within the limits.  The CLM logs statistics in a log file that can later be used to create custom reports that converts the data into meaningful information. The log is an invaluable resource, both for self-assessment and performance analysis.

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 6 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise How do we use it? Installation  It is a licensed component that can be installed independent of any other WebFOCUS software.  Recommended to be installed ideally on its own machine If not, with the WebFOCUS Client, but not on the Reporting Server machines.  For business critical systems, implement CLM Failover.  CLM listens on a TCP/IP Port and can be started in the same way as the Reporting Server.  It has an HTTP Web Console from which one can define rules for monitoring and dispatching requests to the Remote Servers.

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 7 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Configuring CLM We will demonstrate the basics of configuring the CLM.  From the CLM Console:  Enable Cluster Manager (enter License Code) and restart.  Add Remote Servers to manage  Can flag Remote Servers as RESERVED  Can specify startup command to start servers  Create one or more CLM Clusters  Add Remote Servers to the Clusters  Click on Configure the Cluster Manager to specify rules for Remote Servers

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 8 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Specifying Rules for CLM CLM rules apply to all Remote Servers independent of the cluster to which they were assigned.  Polling History  Polling Interval  User Query Dispatch Method  Max Response Time Limit  Threshold for starting/stopping servers  Running Average Period  Cluster Manager Log  AUTO_CONFIG  CLM_MAXWAIT

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 9 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Specifying Rules for CLM An explanation of CLM rules:  Polling History  If CLM Logging is on, the number of records to keep for each Remote Server.  Polling Interval  How often should CLM poll the Remote Servers to do a health check?  User Query Dispatch Method  What dispatch algorithm to use to determine which server the request should be routed to?

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 10 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Specifying Rules for CLM An explanation of Dispatch Algorithms:  Smart ( Default) – based on Response Times  Random - random  Round Robin – alternate between nodes in a cluster  Weighted – each server is weighted according to response times and then randomly chosen if more than 1 server has the same weight.

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 11 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Specifying Rules for CLM An explanation of CLM rules:  Max Response Time Limit  Average Response time from Remote Server that is used as the threshold for starting/stopping servers  Threshold for starting/stopping servers  Number of poll periods to determine if response times are consistent before starting/stopping RESERVED servers.

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 12 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Specifying Rules for CLM An explanation of CLM rules:  Running Average Period  Average Response time only for the number of polls set by the threshold for starting/stopping servers. It’s not the average response time for server lifetime.  Cluster Manager Log  Set to ON if logs are to be captured

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 13 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise WebFOCUS Client and the CLM The WebFOCUS Client (WFC) has to be configured to communicate to one or more clusters defined on the CLM.  Cluster names must match on WFC and CLM  Specify the hostname and port of the CLM Example of WFC communicating to CLM cluster node CLUST1 where CLM on different machine from WFC OR CLM and WFC are using different odin.cfg files. NODE = CLUST1 BEGIN CLASS = CLUSTER REMOTE_CLM_HOST = jetsetter REMOTE_CLM_PORT = END

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 14 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Case Scenarios Let’s demonstrate how we can put these rules to use. Case 1: I have three servers that are monitored and load balanced by Cluster Manager. My requirement is whenever the Response Times for any of those servers exceed 5 seconds, I want to start a RESERVED server.

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 15 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Case Scenarios Let’s demonstrate how we can put these rules to use. Case 2: I have three servers that are monitored and load balanced by Cluster Manager. My business is mission critical so I need to implement CLM Failover. Example of WFC odin.cfg set up for CLM FAILOVER NODE = CLUST1 BEGIN CLASS = CLUSTER REMOTE_CLM_HOST = jetsetter,jetsetter2 REMOTE_CLM_PORT = 38121,48121 END

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 16 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Benefits Here is a list of how features translate to benefits. ■ Lower total cost of ownership ■ Higher system up-time ■ Less human expertise needed ■ More uniform response time ■ More insight into system operations

Copyright 2007, Information Builders. Slide 17 Workload Distribution for the Enterprise Conclusion  Questions and Comments.