Load Balancing Gateway Server
A load balancing gateway server comes in a number of different forms. PTC does not endorse any one of these forms over another. You can choose to use whichever best suits your needs.
• The Windows Network Load Balancing Service in Windows Server 2016 or 2018 provides an example of a simple application that can be set up and run as a load balancing gateway server. For more information, see Network Load Balancing Deployment Guide in the MSDN library.
• Other software applications for load balancing, such as Central Dispatch™ by Resonate®, can also be used. For more information, see the Central Dispatch web page.
• Hardware appliances, such as those produced by Barracuda Networks, Inc., provide yet another form of a load balancing gateway server. For more information, see the Barracuda Load Balancer web page.
Each of the previous solutions provides varying levels of control in regard to load balancing. For a summary of the various techniques available, see the Load Balancing (computing) article on Wikipedia.
The following figure shows what Windchill Risk and Reliability looks like once a load balancing gateway server is added in front of multiple Object Broker Services. You can see how all traffic destined for these services is now routed through the gateway. Behind the scenes, the gateway chooses how to direct traffic to the appropriate Object Broker Service.
For the gateway to be operational, you must update the clients.config file to point to it:
