Intergraph WebScale User Manual page 10

WebScale™
WebScale allows finer control over the load distribution among the servers by
designating load percentages to be assigned for the servers (the next version of
WebScale will provide dynamic load balancing according to the measured server
load).
WebScale's implementation in software that is distributed across the cluster hosts has
several advantages over the use of centralized, hardware-based solutions for distributing
TCP/IP requests within a cluster. First, it avoids introducing a single point of failure
that can disrupt operations. Second, WebScale's performance tracks the constantly
improving performance of the systems on which it runs. Hardware-based solutions
have fixed performance limits with limited lifetimes.
WebScale's fully distributed architecture also has advantages in comparison to other
software solutions, which redirect incoming IP packets to load balance traffic among the
cluster hosts. WebScale imposes significantly less overhead because it does not modify
and retransmit packets. It also can respond faster to system outages and rebalance the
load within a few seconds.
6
User's Guide