Forum Discussion
Ratio load balancing is a way of manipulating the load balancing decision based on some weighted value, and is most often used when the server resources are not all the same (different CPU and memory capacities). There are basically two kinds of ratio load balancing:
(Regular) Ratio balancing - this is where you assign a static ratio number to a node or pool member. Example:
Node 10.10.10.10 Ratio 1
Node 10.10.10.11 Ratio 2
Node 10.10.10.12 Ratio 2
Node 10.10.10.13 Ratio 3
In this example we're literally saying something like for every 1 connection sent to node 1, send 2 new connections to nodes 2 and 3. It's not really that simple, but hopefully you get the idea.
Dynamic Ratio balancing - this has the same effect as above, but uses ratio values derived from calculations instead of the arbitrarily assigned numbers. You must apply an SNMP_DCA or SNMP_DCA_BASE monitor to the pool (or nodes) and customize the threshold values. The SNMP data received from the servers using this monitor is used to assign dynamic ratio values for the load balancing decision.
Again, the primary use case for any ratio load balancing is when you have pool members of varying size/capacity.