Installation guide

Session Life
Number of seconds a client thread should use a session before invalidating or abandoning it.
This should be a small value, or session stickiness can prevent changes in server load from
affecting the proxy server's routing decisions. When sticky sessions are enabled (strongly
recommended), the creation of new sessions allows the proxy to balance the workload.
Invalidate
When checked, specifies that a session is invalidated by the client thread when the thread
stops using a session. When unchecked, the session is abandoned, and exists on the worker
node until the session timeout expires.
Session Timeout
The number of seconds a session can remain unused before the worker node can expire and
remove the session.
Deselecting Invalidate and setting a high value relative to session life causes a significant
number of unused sessions to accumulate on the server.
Num Threads
Number of client threads to launch. Each thread repeatedly makes requests until the Stop
button is pressed, or a request receives a response other than HT TP 200.
Slee p Time
Number of milliseconds that client threads should sleep between requests.
Startup Time
Number of seconds over which the application should stagger client thread start-up. Staggering
the start time of sessions avoids the unrealistic situation where all sessions start and end
almost simultaneously. Staggering the start time allows the proxy to continually see new
sessions and decide how to route them.
Prerequisit es
Complete T ask: Start the Demo before continuing with this task.
1. Click the Client Control tab.
2. Supply values for all fields on the Client Control tab, referring to the list of terms above.
3. Once you have specified the values, proceed to Task: Interact with the Demonstration.
12.3. Interact with the demonstration
Terms
Active Sessions
A session is considered active if a client thread will ever send a request associated with the
session. When client threads stop using a session, they can either send a request to invalidate
it, or abandon it by no longer including its session cookie in requests.
Once a session has been abandoned, it is no longer reflected in the Session Balancing chart,
but will continue to exist on the worker node until it is removed based on session timeout
values.
Tot a l Clients
The number of client threads created since the last time the Start button was clicked.
Live Clients
The number of client threads currently running.
Failed Clients
The number of clients threads that terminated abnormally, for example, a request that resulted
46 Chapter 12. Load balancing demonstration