Multiple method servers can be started on a single host to distribute and balance loads across multiple operating system processes. This may be beneficial if you are running a multiprocessor system that does not have native thread support.

In a multiple method server environment, the default setup performs a simple round-robin balancing on initial client connections only. Load balancing takes the balancing idea one step further to the actual method call. This gives the method server the opportunity to seamlessly switch a client request to a different server at the level of individual method calls if server load is excessive.

The following sections describe how to configure multiple method servers and set properties for load balancing.