About Clustering SAS Web Application Servers

The SAS web applications can be clustered to improve performance and provide high availability. In a clustered environment, multiple server instances are used to handle client requests and transactions, thus improving performance. Performance can also be improved by deploying servers on to additional hardware. Clustering can also provide high availability by ensuring that the server will continue to operate if a server host machine fails.

The server instances in a cluster can coexist on the same machine (vertical clustering), or the server instances can run on a group of middle-tier server machines (horizontal clustering). The web applications can be deployed on vertical clusters, horizontal clusters, and a combination of both.

SAS Web Server is used to provide load balancing by distributing HTTP requests to SAS Web Application Server instances. The web server is the unique access point for customers to access all SAS web applications. The server detects when an application server in the cluster is down and routes requests to other nodes. However, SAS Web Server does not monitor the availability of individual web applications, nor does it monitor the health of an application server that is running.

For more information about clustering, contact Technical Support.