Job distribution

If you have multiple Application Servers installed and they all access the same database, those Application Servers can cooperate by distributing jobs to balance their processing workloads. Using multiple Application Servers increases the job execution capacity of the system and in most cases speeds overall job processing.

Distribution to Application Servers

Application Servers are configured to cooperate when executing jobs. When multiple Application Servers are configured to execute jobs, scheduled jobs are delegated to the first Application Server that requests a job, provided that the Application Server making the request is not already executing the maximum number of jobs that it can run simultaneously. (That maximum number can be configured.) For example, if a BMC Server Automation installation consists of two Application Servers that are both configured to run the same maximum number of jobs, each Application Server is given the same number of jobs to run (assuming an even number of jobs to execute exists).

The number of work items processed during a job run directly corresponds to the number of target servers for the job. During job execution, Application Servers make an effort to distribute work items to each other to increase the number of concurrently executing work items and shorten overall execution time.

Typically, local work item threads on an Application Server process all work items for a job before those work items can be distributed to other Application Servers. However, if all local work item threads are already processing work items, the Application Server distributes work items to other Application Servers that have idle work item threads. Although work for an individual job can be spread among multiple Application Servers, only one Application Server manages each individual job.

For more information about configuring cooperation between Application Servers, see Managing the Application Server.