Mahindra Satyam Cognos BI CoE IBM Cognos Load Balancing Roadmap

This white paper serves to configure and load balancing for IBM Cognos. Cognos CoE provides solution to configure and load balancing Cognos multitiered architecture The scope of this paper is to distribute the load between the web server and application server BENEFIT OF LOAD BALANCING:
Load will be distributed between web servers and application servers. Response time will be reduced to user request. Any web / Application server fail over, the request will be diverted to other Web/ Application servers. It will minimize the business impact.

IBM Cognos 8 User interfaces Net work Firewall

Web-based and Windows-based interfaces

Router

Tier 1: Web server

Web Server 1 Web Server 2 Web Server 3

Net work Firewall

Tier 2: Applications

Application Server 1

Application Server 2

Application Server 3

Net work Firewall

Tier 3: Data

JDB C

API

JDB C

Content store Metric stores Query databases For Load balancing needs to configure following servers/components 1. Web server 2. Router 3. Application server CONFIGURATION OF WEB SERVER: The IBM Cognos 8 Web server tier contains one or more IBM Cognos 8 gateways. Web communication in IBM Cognos 8 is typically through gateways, which reside on one or more Web servers. A gateway is an extension of a Web server program that transfers information from the Web server to another server. The gateway is selected based on type of Web server. Apache_mod gateway with the Apache Web server ISAPI gateway with the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server Servlet gateway with the Web server infrastructure supports Servlets CGI(default) gateway can be used for all supported Web servers

Only gateway is to be installed in Web server to maintain security level. Dispatcher URI for gate way in web server will be set to All application server dispatchers

CONFIGURATION OF ROUTER: Load-balancing routers distribute requests across multiple Web or application servers, ensuring that all dispatchers share the workload. Add all web servers IP Addresses while configuring routers (both Ethernet and Serial interface).

 Enable the routing protocol if router will be participating in a dynamic routing protocol like RIP or IGRP

CONFIGURATION OF APPLICATION SERVER: The IBM Cognos 8 application server has one or more IBM Cognos 8 servers. Each IBM Cognos 8 installation contains Content Manager to manage data stored in the content store. Each IBM Cognos 8 server contains a dispatcher that runs the IBM Cognos 8 presentation service, batch report and report services, job and schedule monitor service, and log service. Only one Content Manager is active at a time. The others are on standby. A standby Content Manager becomes active only if the computer on which the active Content Manager is installed fails. To improve scalability, can enable or disable Content Manager and the dispatcher services on individual application servers to balance the load for a given computer by request type. For example, if you have three application server computers, you might dedicate one to running interactive report requests, another to Content Manager, and the third to the other IBM Cognos 8 services. By targeting processing at specific computers in this way, you can control the load on each computer. For example, putting Content Manager on its own computer ensures that other requests do not downgrade its performance by competing for resources. Because report runs tend to be resource intensive, we recommend that you isolate the report services from other activities, especially in larger IBM Cognos 8 deployments. However, before making this type of tuning configuration, analyze user requirements carefully. Application servers dispatcher load Balancing Mode will be set based on Server Hardware If all the servers are of same configuration Cluster Compatible mode will be selected otherwise Weighted Round Robin Mode will be selected. Processing Capacity will be automatically chosen based on the CPU capacity. Processing Capacity will have default value according to the CPU capacity for example if the server is of 2CPU value will 2 and if the server is of 4CPU its value will be 4. For example a dispatcher with a weight of 2 can do twice the work of a dispatcher with a weight of 1, and so on. Specify Router IP address or Domain registered against Router IP address in application Gateway URI. Distribute services across IBM Cognos 8 application servers. Enable and disable services and their dependent services on IBM Cognos 8 application servers. Specify one common shared folder for Deployment file location in all the application servers