Planning for Scalability in the SunWeb Architecture

The Java ES services used in the SunWeb portal architecture are provided by multiple component instances running on multiple computers behind a load balancer. For example, the portal service is provided by eight Portal Server instances running on computers sunwebPS2 through sunwebPS9.

This architecture could be scaled either horizontally or vertically to handle more incoming connections in the following ways:

• To scale horizontally, the number of computers running Portal Server SRA instances could be increased, up to the capacity of the load balancing hardware. The architecture would remain essentially the same, but the load balancer would be distributing a greater number of incoming connections among a greater number of Portal Server SRA instances. The load on each component instance would remain constant. Similarly, the number of computers running Portal Server, Access Manager, and Directory Server could also be increased, as needed.

  The Access Manager and Directory Server instances could be installed on separate computers, giving each instance more computing resources.

• To scale vertically, additional Solaris 10 zones can be created, if the computers have sufficient memory and disk storage. You can install and run additional component instances in the new zones to increase the capacity of the Java ES services on a single computer hardware system.