Forum Discussion
Carl_Brothers
Employee
EmployeeLTM versus SAP message server for BW
I had set up a VS in the LTM for a SAP BW reporting module on a set of servers, which seemed to work fine applying the same rules layed out in the Netweaver SOA deployment guide. Now the BW module is...
One of the questions I have from your original post is that ". . . message server would always make a better initial load balancing decision." Message server isn't making load balancing decisions, in the traditional sense. It's providing information about the health and capability of the systems behind it.
It's been my experience that today, BIGIP can do a better job determining the load balancing decision than message server can because BIGIP can 1) Consult Message Server 2) Consult(Probe) the actual DI instance and 3) make an SNMP call to determine CPU, then based on all this information, make a load balancing decision. If uptime and reliability is a concern (99.99 or ever 99% over higher) it seems that this would be preferable to get this type of composite picture.
This solution is achieved through and external monitor type and a small amount of coding is required. If you do a search in Google for "Monitoring the Message Server Using the Browser." You will see the specification for how to call your message server. Parsing its output is very easy, though, unfortunately it's not in an XML datatype today. (Sorry I can't provide the link, it's part of a frameset and will probably get mangled if I post it directly here).
-Nojan
