RMI-IIOP Load Balancing and Failover

With RMI-IIOP load balancing, IIOP client requests are distributed to different server instances or name servers, which spreads the load evenly across the cluster, providing scalability. IIOP load balancing combined with EJB clustering and availability also provides EJB failover.

When a client performs a JNDI lookup for an object, the Naming Service essentially binds the request to a particular server instance. From then on, all lookup requests made from that client are sent to the same server instance, and thus all EJBHome objects will be hosted on the same target server. Any bean references obtained henceforth are also created on the same target host. This effectively provides load balancing, since all clients randomize the list of target servers when performing JNDI lookups. If the target server instance goes down, the lookup or EJB method invocation will failover to another server instance.

IIOP Load balancing and failover happens transparently. No special steps are needed during application deployment. However, adding or deleting new instances to the cluster will not update an existing client's view of the cluster. To do so, you must manually update the endpoints list on the client.

For more information on RMI-IIOP load balancing and failover, see Chapter 11, RMI-IIOP Load Balancing and Failover.