Implementing Failover through
Load Balancing within IBM
Cognos 8
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Contents
INTRODUCTION
... 4
PURPOSE...4
APPLICABILITY...4
ASSUMPTIONSAND EXCLUSIONS...4
THE IBM COGNOS 8 APPLICATION TIER ... 5
CONFIGURATIONS ... 5
IMPLEMENTINGTHE FAILOVER CONFIGURATION...6
IMPLEMENTINGTHE LOAD BALANCE CONFIGURATION...9
TESTING THE FAILOVER ... 10
1 Introduction
1.1 PurposeThis paper talks about the implementation of failover through load balancing within the IBM Cognos 8 Application tier.
1.2 Applicability
The steps outlined in this document were validated using:
One server with a full base install of IBM Cognos 8 including gateway, dispatcher, content manager and content store.
One server with only the dispatcher installed. 1.3 Assumptions and Exclusions
This document assumes that the reader has a basic understanding of the IBM Cognos 8 installation and configuration.
This document also assumes that:
2 The IBM Cognos 8 Application Tier
The Application tier of IBM Cognos 8 is where the majority of the processing is performed. Components of the Application Tier receive user requests from the Web Tier components or directly through rich clients and must fulfil them appropriately. In turn, the Application Tier will often have to query the data and process the results and send them back to the presentation layer. Due to this it may be necessary to provide failover and load balancing to the application tier through the addition of another IBM Cognos 8 dispatcher which shares a common IBM Cognos 8 gateway and IBM Cognos 8 content manager. The following sections will provide the detailed implementation steps required to perform this task.
3 Configurations
The installation options can be picked up for both the machines as:
Machine 1 (ajay_j)
Machine 2 (s_singh)
3.1 Implementing the Failover Configuration
1. Open IBM Cognos configuration window of full base installation (ajay_j).
2. Go to “Environment” “Gateway Settings” “Dispatcher URIs for gateway”.
3. Include dispatcher URI of dispatcher only IBM Cognos installation (s_singh).
4. Click OK to return to the main configuration.
5. Click on “Save Configuration” and then click on “Restart” to restart the service as shown below.
6. Open Cognos configuration window of only dispatcher IBM Cognos 8 installation (s_singh)
8. In the same window, delete the original content store connection and create a new content store connection which points to the content store of full base installation (ajay_j).
9. Give an appropriate name to the connection.
10. Right click on the connection and click on “Test”, to test the connection to content store.
11. Save the configuration and restart the service as illustrated earlier. 12. Using a browser, log in to IBM Cognos Connection using the gateway
URL as an administrator and go to Launch IBM Cognos Administration System.
13. Check that both the systems are now registered and marked as “Available” as shown in the following image.
3.2 Implementing the Load Balance Configuration
Load balancing, using IBM Cognos 8 capability, is achieved using a weighted round-robin algorithm. An administrator can assign a weight to each
dispatcher. The higher the weight of a dispatcher the more it will be favoured during the work assignment.
In IBM Cognos 8, you can set process capacity settings using the following steps.
1. Click on the dispatcher which needs to be configured for load balancing, click on “Set Properties”.
2. Then click on “Settings”. Under “Category” tab, then click on “Tuning”.
3. Set an appropriate value for processing capacity based on the load balancing requirements.
4. Click on “OK”.
4 Testing the Failover
Once the configuration is complete, it is advisable to test whether it is
4.1 About the Author(s)
Ajay S Joshi works for IBM Cognos on system Z team out of IBM - India Software Lab, Pune.
He has extensive experience in back end testing of UNIX based business applications. During his free time, he likes playing chess.
Sachchidanand Singh works with the IBM Cognos on system Z team and works out of IBM - India Software Lab, Pune.
