Hardware load balancing with BPC 7.5

[Former Member]

Hi Experts,

We're planning to install a load balanced BPC 7.5 environment and and wondered if anyone has any step by step style pointers on how to do this. The proposed environment is as follows:

3 x integrated 32bit web/app servers, Windows 2003, load balanced using a physical / hardware load balancer (with simple round robin algorithm)

1x SQL/OLAP box, 64bit Windows 2003/SQL Server 2008

SSL is NOT required.

Having researched this on the web, we've picked up the following which we think are correct for a setting up a load balanced environment:

1. The load balancer must have a DNS address which all the servers can resolve/access

2. This address is entered into the "Virtual Web" and "Virtual App" server boxes of the Server Options screen when performing the install.

3. The load balancer should be set up to have stickyness enabled, but otherwise it simply fires incoming client requests to one of the servers depending on the algorithm set for this.

4. There is a change required to the web.config file of the Osoft website on each machine in order to ensure that the encryption keys are all the same.

Are the above correct and have we missed anything?

Better still does anyone have or know of a step by step SAP guide on how to do this, or even done it themselves and have made a step by step guide?

Any help much appreciated!

Many thanks,

Simon

[Former Member]

er simon... you appear to be using my name in your sap id?

[former_member192799]

Hi Simon,

There are 2 more steps:

• on each app server, edit the hosts file and add the virtual DNS name with the loopback address. This way when the server resolves the virtual name as part as internal processing, it resolves to itself and not another node

• you might need to disable the loop-back adaptor. That is done in the registry. There is a MS KB article that describes the steps.

Stickiness is necessary for the admin client. If you don't have stickiness on the NLB, then you need to take measures so that your admin clients always communicate with the same app server. This is not a concern with the Office client.

Best regards,

Bruno

[Former Member]

Hi,

We had a session with an consultant in February to look at this topic. I suggest that you do the same, or at least review what you are proposing with them.

I think that defining the correct setup of SAP BPC in multi server landscapes is a bit of a mine field and that there are many mistakes that you could make.

The installation and master guides seem to offer incomplete information in some cases.

The consultant did suggest that load balancing would be best practice, It would probably be a good area for a how to guide.

Regards,

Mark