I have a Weblogic Cluster and Apache is acting as a front end proxy. By default the Weblogic Cluster and plugin uses round robin algorithm and suppose if i change the loadbalancing algorithm to weightbased or randon how will the weblogic plugin comes to know about the loadbalancing algorithm changes on the WLS cluster side. For serving this purpose do we need a hardware loadbalancer? Apache as a front end proxy with WLS plugin will only support round robin algorithm or will it support other loadbalancing algorithm.For a HA large scale production Env do we prefer Apache with WLS plugin or H/W loadbalancer like bigip or cisco lb as a front end for Weblogic.
Share
The comment is right. The apache plugin only uses Round Robin. For other load balancing strategy, you have to choose HW loadbalancer.
As to your last question, we usually prefer HW loadbalancer over Apache + plugin due to more choice of load balancing strategy, better management interface and some extra features that load balancer provides, such as compression, SPDY support, etc. But if you have lots of static content, Apache + plugin is not a bad choice as it can serve the static content directly without hitting the weblogic cluster, thus reduce the WLS server load. Also a common architecture design is HW loadbalancer –> apache –> weblogic cluster. Thus there is load balancing and HA on the apache server too.