Balancing the workload in a cluster

After monitoring your cluster and determining that you want to make an adjustment, you can perform the following tasks to better balance the workload across the servers in a cluster.

  • Limit the workload on a server (by changing the server availability threshold)
  • Change the setting for the maximum number of users who can use a server at the same time
  • Move (distribute) databases to other servers
  • Plan the number and placement of replicas in a clusters to create more replicas of busy databases
  • Add one or more servers to the cluster
  • Use the Activity Trends tool to analyze and make recommendations about the conditions in a cluster

Keep in mind that workload balancing is not the solution for a general lack of capacity in your enterprise. If your Domino® servers are struggling with their current workload, and there are no additional servers to handle the excess load, enabling workload balancing will not solve the problem. To balance the workload, there must be somewhere to send the overflow from the overworked servers. If there is nowhere to send these requests, they will be handled by the original busy servers. However, the process of looking for another available server for each request will increase the workload on the server. If you do not have enough capacity in your enterprise, consider adding more memory or processors or otherwise upgrading your equipment to handle a larger load.

If the workload in your cluster is normally well distributed, consider configuring the cluster for failover only, not for workload balancing.