Configuring Load Balancing for Front-end Servers

If you have a running Silk Central instance and the users of this instance experience performance issues due to increased load, you can set up additional front-end servers for spreading the load.

Initial situation:
  • You have installed Silk Central on Server A.
  • You have a running instance which lacks in performance.
  • You want to add an additional front-end server for spreading the load.

To add a front-end server for load balancing to this instance:

  1. Install Silk Central on Server B using Silk Central's Setup.
  2. When Setup is completed, navigate to the Instance Administration (http://localhost:19100) on Server B.
  3. As you just need a front-end server, stop the application server and the chart server of the instance you want to use for load balancing.
  4. Click Settings to open the Settings dialog of this instance. On the Servers tab, select the front-end server and copy the front-end server port.
  5. Switch to Server A and navigate to the Instance Administration (http://localhost:19100).
  6. Click Settings to open the Settings dialog of your performance lacking instance and activate the maintenance mode.
  7. On the file system, open the NGINX custom properties file (C:\ProgramData\SilkCentral\InstanceAdministration\nginx\conf\nginxCustom.properties) and add the URL of the front-end server on Server B (<SERVER_NAME>:<PORT>), using the copied front-end server port. Notation: frontendservers.<INSTANCE_NAME>=<FE_URL1>{,<FE_URL2>,...,<FE_URLX>}

    For example: frontendservers.silk=localhost:19110,silkserver2:19320

    Attention: Because of NGINX restrictions it is not possible to use port 19120 of a front-end server. Always get the port from the settings dialog as described in step 4.
  8. Go back to the Instance Administration page and click Settings to open the Settings dialog of your performance lacking instance. On the Servers tab, select the application server and copy the application server port.
  9. To establish the connection between the front-end server on Server B and the instance's application server on Server A, open a web browser and navigate directly to Server B's front-end server using http://<Server B>:<front-end server port>. Make sure you use the port from the settings dialog, not 19120!
  10. On the application server connection page, enter the Host or IP-address and the copied application server port of Server A.
  11. Go back to the Instance Administration page and deactivate the maintenance mode. This will update the NGINX configuration.

When your users now access the instance using the same URL as before, they are automatically balanced between the front-end servers on Server A and Server B.

Parent topic: Front-end Server Load Balancing