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Setting Up Server Keys for Siebel Loyalty

Server keys are used for batch components, not for real-time components. For more information about batch and real-time components, see Setting Up Server Components for Siebel Loyalty.

Server keys are used for two reasons:

• To distribute members across different servers and processes, for static load balancing.
• To make sure that only one process is processing a member at any time. (Within the process, the Siebel Loyalty Engine makes sure that only one processing thread is processing a member at any time.)

Siebel Loyalty automatically assigns the least-loaded key to new members.

Using Server Keys for Load Balancing

The number of different keys you define depends on:

• The number of servers available.
• The number of processes that can run on each server.
• The number of keys you assign to each server - process number combination.

It is recommended that you assign ten keys to each server - process number combination to allow the administrator to do load balancing by shifting keys from one process to another.

For example, imagine you determine that you need five server processes to process transactions. You have two servers available that can each run three processes, but one of them is already running another process.

It is possible to create only five keys and assign them to the five available server processes, as shown in Table 9.

However, if you create only five keys, then the administrator cannot manually switch keys from one process to another if one process is overloaded.

Therefore, it is recommended that you define fifty keys. Initially, you assign ten of these keys to each process. If one of the processes is overloaded, then the administrator can reassign one or more keys from that process to other processes.

Setting Up the Server Keys

The following procedure describes how to set up server keys.

To set up server keys

1. Navigate to the Loyalty Program Administration screen.
2. In the link bar, click Server Key Map.
3. In the Server Key Map list, add a record for each server key, and complete the necessary fields, which are described in the following table.

   Field	Description
   Key	Enter a name for the server key.
   Server Name	Enter the name of the server that processes members who have this key.
   Process Number (#)	Enter the process number for this server that processes members who have this key.
   Number (#) of Members Assigned	Displays the number of members assigned to this key.

Balancing Server Loads

The following procedure describes how to balance the load on servers.

To balance the load on servers

1. Navigate to the Loyalty Program Administration screen.
2. In the link bar, click Server Key Map.
3. In the Server Key Map list, change the server name (if necessary) and the process number for some of the keys being processed by overloaded server processes.