Hardware Load Balancing Considerations

If you are deploying a hardware load balancer between the SiteMinder Policy Server and Web Agents, consider the following:

Do not configure a TCP heartbeat or health–check directly against the Policy Server TCP ports. Heartbeats and health–checks applied directly against the TCP ports of the Policy Server can adversely affect its operation.
Design a comprehensive facility for the load balancer to test the operational health of the Policy Server.
Consider the impact of a single Policy Server configuration on the Web Agent failover algorithm as opposed to a multiple Policy Server configuration.
Consider performance and failure scenarios in Web Agent and Policy Server tuning and monitoring.
If the load balancer is configured to proxy Agent-to-Policy-Server connections, consider the timeouts and the socket states of the load balancer.
Note: For more information about deploying a hardware load balancer between Web Agents and Policy Servers, see the related Knowledge Base article (KB ID 21135) on the Support site.

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