Active Directory and SAP Web dispatcher

[Former Member]

We have some documentation that mentions that the SAP Web dispatcher needs to connect to our Active Directory Domain.

I was wondering, does the SAP Web dispatcher need access to Active Directory? If so, can you please explain why.

Thank you

[michael_mulvey · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The webdispatcher does not need to connect with Active Directory. The webdispatcher only needs to access the message server and even this is not necessary as you can create the following files which negates the need to connect to the message server.

(1) info.icr

(2) icrgroups.txt

(3) urlinfo.txt

Hope this helps

Michael

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Michael,

If you do not need the message server for SAP Webdispatcher does that mean you can use the Webdispatcher for non SAP system. I.E. a IIS website runing asp.net?

If yes, how would you go about setting that up?

You mentioned info.icr, icrgroups.txt, urlinfo.txt files. Can you give examples of these files? Where would they be located?

Thank you in advance,

Roy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Roy,

Message server has information about the current status of available SAP instances and this information is used by Web Dispatcher to make intelligent decisions on session load balancing.

It is possible to replace dynamic information, provided by message server, with static information from the file on the disk, *.icr (it can be named anything, but it is customary to keep .icr extension)

In this case in the *.pfl profile, instead of the information about the message server:

rdisp/mshost = <host>

ms/http_port = <port>

you will have

wdisp/server_info_location = <path>/<name>.icr

<name>.icr file will have the same format as the output of msg server.

For example, for SAP system SS1 with one instance and 2 server nodes it could be

#########################

Version 1.0

SS1

J2EE host.corp.com 50000 DIA=2

#########################

That is it about replacing message server info with static info for Web Dispatcher. You should realize, that static file cannot provide current information about SAP system instance availability and current capacity, which undermines the value of load balancing.

Regarding icrgroups.txt and urlinfo.txt. You can use them to distribute the load, based on various criterias. A good example will be using zones to do workload distribution based on zones:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04s/helpdata/en/87/252c4142aef623e10000000a155106/frameset.htm

Web dispatcher can perform other functions, not related to load balancing: SSL termination/forwarding/reencoding, URL filtering/redirection/forwarding, etc. For some of those you may need additional files, like permission table *.pt or log files.

If you would explain what you need Web Dispatcher for, I could probably make more specific examples.

Returning to your original question: AD is not required for Web Dispatcher, unless your company does not allow running Web Dispatcher under non-AD domain user on Windows OS. In this case, server hosting Web Dispatcher needs to be connected to AD.

Hope this helps.

Slava.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Slava,

We are looking to use the web dispatcher two ways.

1. Used to allow users to connect to SAP portal, ESS, MSS, e-recruitment etc.

2. Use the web dispatcher to connect to IIS 6 websites running asp.net

We are aware that we may have to install 2 web dispatchers, so we can use the load balancing features with the SAP systems, but we are not sure if we can use the web dispatcher with item 2.

Can we use web dispatcher to connect to IIS 6 websites running asp.net? If so what configuration would we need to do to the web disptacher to get this to work?

Thank you for your help,

Roy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

You can use web dispatcher for routing or load balancing web traffic for IIS.

Configuration will depend on the requirements and infrastructure in your particular case.

Regards,

Slava

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Slava,

I am not too familiar with setting up SAP Web dispatcher. Is it possible for you to give step by step instructions on how to set up Web dispatcher to work with IIS?

Your help is much appreciated,

Roy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Roy,

You might want to refer to this [WebDispatcher|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/42/5cfd3b0e59774ee10000000a114084/frameset.htm]

Hope this helps.

Sandeep Tudumu

[sascha_tubbesing]

Is this official SAP documentation? Could you provide a link to it, to check the context of this statement.

For a standard load balancing use case, I see no reason why web dispatcher needs to connect to AD.