the other databases in the same instance must also be taken offline. Client load balancing and Analysis Services Load Balancer may be better solutions for you if you want to load-balance databases individually. Client Load Balancing In the client load balancing, each client knows which query server it will use. Implementing this strategy requires client-side code that can intelligently choose the right query server and then modify the connection string accordingly. Excel add-ins are an example of this type of client-side code. Note that you will have to develop your own load balancer to achieve this. Hardware-Level Load Balancing Using technologies such as load balancers from F5, it is possible to implement load balancing directly in the network layer of the architecture. This makes the load balancing transparent to both Analysis Services and the client application. If you choose to go down this route, make sure that the load-balance appliance enables you to affinitize client connections. When clients create session objects, state is stored on Analysis Services. If a later client request, relying on the same session state, is redirected to a different server, the OLE DB provider throws an error. However, even if you run affinity, you may still have to force clients off the server when processing needs to commit. For more information about the ForceCommitTimeout setting, see the locking section. Windows Network Load Balancing The Microsoft load-balancing solution is Network Load Balancing (NLB), is a feature of the Windows Server operating system. With NLB, you can create an NLB cluster of Analysis Services servers running in multiple-host mode. When an NLB cluster of Analysis Services servers is running in multiple-host mode, incoming requests are load balanced among the Analysis Services servers. Analysis Services Load Balancer Analysis Services is used extensively inside Microsoft to serve our business users with data. As part of the initiative to scale out our Analysis Services farms a new load balancing solution was built. The advantages of this solution are that you can load balance on the database level and that you use a web API to control each database and the users connected to it. This customized Analysis Services load balancing solution also allows fine control over the load balancing algorithm used. Be aware that moving large datasets over the web API has a bandwidth overhead, depending on how much data is requested by user queries. Measure this bandwidth overhead as part of the cube test phase. References: Analysis Services Load Balancing Solution -
the other databases in the same instance must also be taken offline. Client load balancing and Analysis Services Load Balancer may be better solutions for you if you want to load-balance databases individually. Client Load Balancing In the client load balancing, each client knows which query server it will use. Implementing this strategy requires client-side code that can intelligently choose the right query server and then modify the connection string accordingly. Excel add-ins are an example of this type of client-side code. Note that you will have to develop your own load balancer to achieve this. Hardware-Level Load Balancing Using technologies such as load balancers from F5, it is possible to implement load balancing directly in the network layer of the architecture. This makes the load balancing transparent to both Analysis Services and the client application. If you choose to go down this route, make sure that the load-balance appliance enables you to affinitize client connections. When clients create session objects, state is stored on Analysis Services. If a later client request, relying on the same session state, is redirected to a different server, the OLE DB provider throws an error. However, even if you run affinity, you may still have to force clients off the server when processing needs to commit. For more information about the ForceCommitTimeout setting, see the locking section. Windows Network Load Balancing The Microsoft load-balancing solution is Network Load Balancing (NLB), is a feature of the Windows Server operating system. With NLB, you can create an NLB cluster of Analysis Services servers running in multiple-host mode. When an NLB cluster of Analysis Services servers is running in multiple-host mode, incoming requests are load balanced among the Analysis Services servers. Analysis Services Load Balancer Analysis Services is used extensively inside Microsoft to serve our business users with data. As part of the initiative to scale out our Analysis Services farms a new load balancing solution was built. The advantages of this solution are that you can load balance on the database level and that you use a web API to control each database and the users connected to it. This customized Analysis Services load balancing solution also allows fine control over the load balancing algorithm used. Be aware that moving large datasets over the web API has a bandwidth overhead, depending on how much data is requested by user queries. Measure this bandwidth overhead as part of the cube test phase. References: Analysis Services Load Balancing Solution -
SSASOpsGuide2008R2.docx