Configuring communications enabled applications in a cluster

You can configure multiple application servers to use the Communications Enabled Applications (CEA) capability in a cluster environment to balance workload demands.

About this task

To scale to two or more application servers running CEA, you must create a cluster that includes each application server. Clusters are groups of servers that are managed together and participate in workload management. You must use proxy servers to distribute the requests to the CEA application servers, but not IBM® HTTP Servers. CEA is implemented as a converged application that combines both HTTP and session initiation protocol (SIP) protocols. However, IBM HTTP Server is limited to handling the HTTP protocol. The proxy server is a converged proxy so it handles both HTTP and SIP protocols.

Procedure

  1. Identify the application servers or nodes that are running CEA that you want to manage as a cluster.
  2. Create the cluster using the administrative console.
    For details on creating the cluster, read about creating a cluster using basic cluster settings.
  3. Install a SIP proxy server.
    The SIP proxy server routes HTTP and SIP requests to the back-end application servers. This proxy server provides high performance SIP proxy capabilities that you can use at the edge of the network to route, load balance, and improve response times for SIP dialogs to backend SIP resources. For details on installing a SIP proxy server, read about installing a SIP proxy server.
  4. Configure the SIP converged proxy server.
    Select the default cluster to specify where you want the SIP proxy to route requests. After you choose a default cluster, your SIP proxy server is functional.

Results

You have successfully configured a cluster environment for CEA applications.