Load Balanced Server

The Load Balanced Server provides Failover and Clustering support. It provides the following features:

Active Load Balancing

This feature of the product causes the Workflow Engine and the Task Scheduler services on different servers to form a cluster and share the load. The workflow client always requests the least used server in the cluster for workflow execution. During the execution of a workflow, the Workflow Engine identifies a least used server and forwards the execution of that workflow to this server. However, this is true only for workflows executed in asynchronous mode. The load is shared uniformly by all the servers in the cluster leading to a true Active-Active load balancing environment.

Scalability

The number of servers running the Workflow Engine in a cluster can be increased or decreased depending on the number of workflow execution requests. After the configuration is done and the Workflow Engine is started, it automatically joins the cluster and starts sharing the load immediately.

Failover Capabilities

Any server running the Workflow Engine in the cluster can be safely shutdown or restarted without interrupting the execution of any workflows that may have been using that server. When a service is stopped or the server goes out of the network (following a shutdown or restart), all requests to that server are stopped. The other Workflow Engine services in the cluster will resume all pending tasks for the shutdown server.