Horizontal Scaling overview

In a horizontal scaling configuration, identical Lawson Environments are installed on multiple machines and managed via a clustered network topology which is defined and managed by WebSphere Network Deployment Manager. The purpose of a horizontally-scaled configuration is to achieve increased transaction throughput and server fail-over.

  • One machine in the configuration is defined as the master (or primary) server. The master server is installed with a complete copy of Infor Lawson System Foundation and Lawson Applications. As a prerequisite to beginning this installation, you must have completed the installation and verification of Infor Lawson Core Technology, Lawson Portal, and Lawson Applications on the master server.

  • All other machines in the configuration are defined as secondary servers. Each secondary server must be identical to the master server, with an exception:

    • Each secondary server has a %LAWDIR%\system directory.

All Lawson servers in the configuration point to the same instance of the following:

  • Web server or optional load balancer

  • LDAP instance

  • RDBMS instance

  • A shared file system, which holds data that can be shared by all Lawson servers in the configuration. With the exception of the %LAWDIR%\system directory, all the Environment and Applications files reside on the shared disk. Symbolic links on each Lawson server point to the directory structure on the shared disk.

The Load Balancer

Lawson supports the use of multiple web servers managed by a load balancer. There are no Lawson-specific configuration requirements for the load balancer.

  • Each web server must be installed with Lawson web components.

  • If you set up the load balancer prior to installing Lawson products, use the load balancer's server name and port number when you supply web server name and port number values for the initial Lawson installations.

  • If you set up the load balancer after you have completed the Lawson installation, you must complete post-installation procedures to replace the web server data stored in the Lawson system with the address and port number of the load balancer . See Changing the Web Server URL (Load Balancer users only).

The Shared File System

The shared file system is a file structure that you create on a shared disk that is accessible to all Lawson servers in the configuration.

Most of the Environment and Applications files reside on the shared disk:

  • %GENDIR%

  • %LADBDIR%

  • %LAUNTDIR%

  • %LAWDIR% except %LAWDIR%\system. A %LAWDIR%\system directory must exist on each Lawson server in the configuration to permit instance-specific activity.

Because each Lawson server must be identical (with the exception of %LAWDIR%\system), sharing the Environment and application product lines greatly simplifies system administration and system updates.