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Deploying
IBM® Sametime® consists of a variety of servers and clients, and can be deployed to suit many different environments. The deployment instructions are organized by feature set, beginning with the minimum components that are necessary to support instant messaging, and then expanding the deployment to include features such as audio and video support, and conferencing.
Clustering servers for high availability and failover
You can provide failover and load balancing in your deployment by creating a cluster of multiple IBM® Sametime® servers of the same type. All Sametime servers can be clustered except for the Sametime System Console, and the Video MCU and TURN Server components of the Sametime Media Manager.
Clustering Sametime® Community Servers
IBM® Sametime® Community Server clusters provide redundancy, load balancing, and failover for community Connections. Sametime Community Servers are clustered as part of an IBM Domino® server cluster. A Sametime Community Server can belong to only one cluster.
Setting up the load-balancing mechanism (rotating DNS or Network Dispatcher)
The way in which you set up the load-balancing mechanism varies slightly depending on whether you have deployed Community Server multiplexers on separate computers.
Setting up the load-balancing mechanism without separate multiplexers
If you have not deployed IBM® Sametime® Community Server multiplexers on separate computers, you have two choices for setting up the load balancing mechanism.

Setting up the load-balancing mechanism without separate multiplexers

If you have not deployed IBM® Sametime® Community Server multiplexers on separate computers, you have two choices for setting up the load balancing mechanism.

Set up a rotating DNS system to accomplish load balancing. Use rotating DNS to associate the IP addresses of the Sametime Community Server computers to a single DNS name.
For example, associate the IP address of Sametime Community server 1 (11.22.33.66) and Sametime Community server 2 (11.22.33.77) to the DNS name cscluster.sametime.com.
Set up an IBM WebSphere® Edge Server (Network Dispatcher) in front of the Sametime servers that you intend to cluster. Use the WebSphere Edge Server Network Dispatcher to distribute connections to the Sametime Community servers. For more information, see the WebSphere Edge Server documentation, available at the website www.redbooks.ibm.com (and also provided with the WebSphere Edge Server).

The diagram that follows shows the Sametime servers with the rotating DNS system in place. Note that the WebSphere Edge Server can be used in place of the rotating DNS system.

Client connection with rotating DNS connected to two Sametime servers which are part of a Domino cluster. An LDAP directory server sits outside the cluster.