Implementation Guide › Performance Tuning › Web Tier Performance › Improve Web Agent Performance through Load Balancing

Improve Web Agent Performance through Load Balancing

When you have multiple Web Agents and Policy Servers, dynamic load balancing reduces latency and improves throughput because the Web Agents distribute requests among all the Policy Servers. Dynamic load balancing gives the Web Agents faster access to Policy Servers and more efficient authentication and authorization.

The EnableFailover parameter of the Host Configuration Object uses one of the following values to determine how Web Agent connections are handled:

• When the value is set to yes, the Web Agent always tries to connect to the first Policy Server listed (from left to right) in the Host Configuration Object. If you have multiple Policy Servers, all the Web Agents try to connect to the first one. The other servers in the list are not contacted unless the first server in the list is not available. In high-volume environments, this configuration is less efficient than load balancing because some Policy Servers handle many connections while others handle fewer connections, if any.
• When the value is set to no, load-balancing is enabled. The Web Agents balance their requests among all the Policy Servers in listed in the Host Configuration Object in a round-robin fashion. We recommend this setting because it produces better throughput when using multiple Policy Servers. Failover still occurs if one of the load balancing Policy Servers is not available.

  Note: For more information, see the SiteMinder Policy Server Configuration Guide.