[jboss-user] Clustering and Loadbalancing with HTTP and EJB

Hi, I'm currently in the planning stage of a clustered JBoss Environment. I understand that there are two service architectures for clustering and loadbalancing. One with a client-side interceptor used for fat-clients that communicate via ejb/rmi and a loadbalancer for HTTP access via Apache and mod_jk. If i need a mixed setup of both (web-access and rich-client applications), how would someone distribute the load over multiple cluster nodes with the following aspects: a.) the fat-clients should have a higher priority. For example if massive webclients cause a high load on the cluster the fat-clients should not be influenced by this b.) both client access (web and fat) should be distributed over all nodes in the cluster to improve failover. I thought of the following setup: - 4 JBoss Nodes in the cluster partition (identical ressources/performance) - 4 mod_jk connectors with different loadbalancing factors 2/2/1/1 - fat-client interceptor with loadbalancing factor 1/1/2/2 This would ensure that all nodes are utilized (for failover) and the web-clients can't influence the fat-clients that much, right? The main part of the web-clients would go to node 1 and 2 and only in case of a fail utilize 3 and 4 more (maybe even use higher lbfactors than 2). That's the theory :-). Some Questions: - I intend to use round-robin for loadbalancing (both clients). How can I specify loadbalancing factors for the fat-client interceptor? I only found a documentation how to do it with mod_jk - The fat-client has to download a proxy class from a cluster node. How is this done initially? How does the client select the node? Is this a static definition? If yes? what happens if this node is down, or does the client need a (maintained) list of nodes (before even downloading the proxy class) as the mod_jk loadbalancer does? Thanks for answers! Reinhard