Load Balancing
NetMan Desktop Manager's integrated load balancing offers the option of distributing sessions among several servers. Moreover, NDM can also distribute the load evenly or in proportion to the individual servers' performance capabilities. In the latter case, high-powered servers carry a greater proportion of the load.
NetMan Desktop Manager's load balancing mechanism also supports "server draining". This can be used to remove specific servers gracefully from the load balancing cluster to perform maintenance for example. A server being drained continues to serve its existing sessions, but does not accept new users or sessions. If necessary, the administrator can also terminate the remaining sessions. After the maintenance work is completed, a simple mouse-click is all it takes to add the server back into the load balancing cluster.
In addition to application-based load balancing, NetMan Desktop Manager also supports the use of the network load balancing (NLB) integrated in Windows Server 2003. All servers in the Windows 2003 product line, from Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition upward, have NLB capability, which permits load sharing among several servers at the IP level.
