This chapter describes the clustering, load balancing, and failover capabilities offered by Oracle Business Intelligence.

The Oracle BI components are supported in a many-to-many architecture. End user web requests can be directed to one of many BI Presentation Services servers. In turn, each BI Presentation Services can take advantage of the availability of multiple BI Servers. The BI Cluster Server feature allows multiple BI Servers to be deployed. BI Schedulers participate in the cluster in an active-passive configuration. A Cluster Controller serves as the entry point to the clustered servers. The server metadata is contained in the repository file (.RPD) that is local to each BI Server. One BI Server is designated as a Master. Online changes to the RPD file are made on the Master BI Server and these changes are replicated to other members of the cluster. A cluster-aware cache capability offers support for a common query cache that is visible to all BI Servers in the cluster.

Clustering capability for the Presentation layer allows for the deployment of a multi-server environment to better manage large volumes of users and to provide high availability. Multiple BI Presentation Services instances in the cluster can either share a common Presentation Catalog on a network storage device, or the catalog may be replicated across each BI Presentation Services instance. Native load balancing and failover capabilities are offered for the components of the Presentation layer.