This step involves mapping the most important site characteristics to each component. Once again, from a scalability viewpoint, the key components of the infrastructure are the dispatchers or edge servers, the Web appservers, security services, transaction and data servers, and the network. Table 2-7 specifies the significance of each workload characteristic to each component. As seen in the table, the effect on each component is different for each workload characteristic.
Whenever we use the terms dispatchers or edge servers throughout this chapter, we are referring to a technology that includes a variety of hardware and software solutions, one of which is the Load Balancer from the IBM® WAS Network Deployment V5.1 Edge Components.
| Workload characteristics | Web present. server | Web app. server | Network | Security servers | Firewalls | Existing business servers | Database server |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High volume, dynamic, transactional, fast growth | High | High | High | High | High | High | High |
| High % user-specific responses | Low | High | Low | Low | Low | High | High |
| High % cross-session information | Med | High | Low | Low | Low | Low | Med |
| High volume of dynamic searches | High | High | Med | Low | Med | Med | High |
| High transaction complexity | Low | High | Low | Med | Low | High | High |
| High transaction volume swing | Med | High | Low | Low | Low | High | High |
| High data volatility | High | High | Low | Low | Low | Med | High |
| High # unique items | Low | Med | Low | Low | Low | High | High |
| High # page views | High | Low | High | Low | High | Low | Low |
| High % secure pages (privacy) | High | Low | Low | High | Low | Low | Low |
| High security | High | High | Low | High | Low | High | Low |
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