Peoplesoft Webserver Clustering

There are a number of ways to setup a Webserver cluster for a PeopleSoft system. Customers can use either BEA WebLogic or IBM WebSphere as their webserver and use the clustering mechanism provided by the vendor. Please consult the vendor provided documentation for a detailed understanding of Webserver clustering. Note that the architecture proposed here has been adapted for PeopleSoft applications and is therefore somewhat different than the documents provided by BEA or IBM.

BEA WebLogic provides a mechanism to cluster WebLogic webservers and access the cluster via WebLogic proxies. These proxies can be another WebLogic server, Microsoft IIS, Netscape iPlanet or Apache webserver and shall be collectively called “WebLogic proxy” in this document. Please carefully note the distinction between “WebLogic clustering” and “webserver clustering” used extensively in this document. Following up on this distinction some deployment setups will require WebLogic clustering while for others will require WebLogic clustering. When WebLogic clustering is not used a suitable third party loadbalancer must be used. Architecture of these various scheme along with their respective advantages and disadvantages are discussed later in this chapter.

IBM WebSphere provides a mechanism to cluster WebSphere webservers and access the cluster via an HTTP (proxy) plugin. This WebSphere plugin is installed on an HTTP (proxy) server. Please note carefully the distinction between “WebSphere clustering” and “webserver clustering” used extensively in this document. Following up on this distinction some deployment setup will require WebSphere clustering while others will require WebSphere clustering. When WebSphere clustering is not used a suitable third party loadbalancer must be used. Architecture of these various scheme along with their respective advantages and disadvantages are discussed later in this chapter.

Webserver clustering shall provide scalability and stateless failover. Under stateless failover, if a server fails user sessions shall be restarted with another functioning server. All unsaved data on the failed server shall be lost but the user login shall be preserved. WebLogic clustering requires a cluster license to operate. It should be noted that the WebLogic licenses delivered with a PeopleSoft installation already includes the required WebLogic Cluster license.

WebLogic/WebSphere clustering requires that the cluster is accessed via a WebLogic/WebSphere proxy. This introduces another tier to the data flow and is not recommended for applications with very high scalability requirement.