How to Load Balance between java dialog instance in BI Portal

[dan_pfingsten2]

We have installed a BI Portal (java stack only) to go

along with the BI 7.0 sps 12 ABAP system.

Have added another dialog instance on a separate box for

the BI Portal to handle increased usage. The question is how to load balance between the 2 java dialog instances in this cluster.

It appears that all the BI queries (RSPLAN as well

as Integrated Planning and BeX), are still going to the

original box and are not getting load balanced over to the

new dialog instance. For this scenario, I thought the

message server of the Central Services Instance on the

java side would load balance all nodes in the cluster.

Is SAP Web Dispatcher needed for this? Even though

this isn't a true portal? It's only used for the BI

queries. If Web Dispatcher is used, the current URL

goes to the java central instance node. wouldn't that

have to be redirected somehow instead to use the web dispatcher URL?

Any feedback appreciated and due points awarded!

[JPReyes · Accepted solution]

Yes, you need Webdispatcher

Read all about it at,

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/42/5cfd3b0e59774ee10000000a114084/frameset.htm

Regards

Juan

[dan_pfingsten2]

Thank you, I had read through this but it wasn't clear if this extra layer was needed in our scenario. I had actually started up the Web Dispatcher but the documentation isn't clear on how to route requests through it. For example, the abap BI and java portal are connected via the JCo's (java connectors). So URL's generated are for the java central instance box and go directly there. So how does the web dispatcher get integrated into this scenario? It appears that the URL's are going to bypass this layer unless you somehow specific to use the URL for the web dispatcher. I thought maybe because the web dispatcher is connected to and knows about the java message server that it would load balance URL's from that standpoint, but this does not appear to be the case. Any thoughts on this?

[Former Member]

Dan, If hardware solution is an option, you might want to look in to it. I found it simplistic compared to other solutions.

If you have a hardware load balancer in your landscape, you can have them configure a virtual ip with ports 80 & 443, have the load balancer route the traffic to HTTP/HTTPS ports of the J2EE server. That's how we do it in our e-commerce landscape. You just need to create a DNS alias for the virutal IP of the loadbalancer and publish the DNS alias to the end users.

-RK

[dan_pfingsten2]

We'll have to use the SAP Web Dispatcher.

How about the scenario where the users are running queries through transaction RSPLAN (from abap BW)? Any idea on how to reconfigure that to cause the URL to go to the web dispatcher vs. directly to the central instance? Somehow the URL needs to be generated using the web dispatcher URL instead.

[hofmann]

Hi Dan,

you will have to point all your systems to the Web Dispatcher in the SLD. If you don't do this, the browser will always retrieve the URL to the central instance, bypassing the Web Dispatcher. After you configured as the system to contact the Web Dispatcher, the browser will receive the URL of the Web Dispatcher and send the request to the Web Dispatcher.

On the Web Dispatcher, you'll have to configure an appropriate rule to handle that request. You can use 1 IP and different ports. Each port means another system. Or several virtual IPs and the same/different port.

IP1:8001 -> WD -> BI 1

IP1:8002 -> WD -> BI 2

or

IP1:8001 -> WD -> BI1

IP2:8002 -> WD -> BI2

In this case, you can keep the flexibility of using several backend systems with different names/IPs/Ports and one Web Dispatcher.

For refence, you can consult the following 2 documents:

General Information about how to use Web Dispatcher:

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/8105db90-0201-0010-cfbe-ae9...

How to implement Web Dispatcher as a single point of entrance

p. 40-42: "

Internet Connectivity to SAP Applications.pdf"

(Unfortunatly, I'm right now not able to locate this document again in SDN, but it exists somewhere. Good luck!)

br,

Tobias

[dan_pfingsten2]

The Web Dispatcher did load balance across multiple dialog instances. However, to do get the BI planning queries to run through the web dispatcher I had to change the URL in rsplsa and sm30 for rspor_t_portal. One other option without having to use a web dispatcher is to simply use the configtool to add a server node to an existing java dialog instance. it will be on the same hardware but assuming you have the memory/cpu and I/O capability it is a very quick way to ramp up the java instance.