Use Thinfinity’s load balancing capabilities to accurately manage server workload


Why use Load Balancing on mid-size and large deployments

Companies look to provide access to mission-critical applications effectively and efficiently. For advanced infrastructure setups with a large number of concurrent users, the main challenge lies in delivering high availability and fault tolerance solutions that can keep up with the increased demand.

How does your business handle remote access for external contractors? That’s a question many are asking today as companies are relying more and more on contract workers, third-party vendors, and international staff augmentation strategies.

Why use Load Balancing in Thinfinity Remote Workspace?

When one server cannot manage to keep up with the needed resources, Load Balancing comes into play. Too many concurrent connections to applications that handle a lot of graphics, sound, or other elements that require high availability, may cause an overload. 

Thinfinity Remote Workspace provides components allowing you to distribute the workload across multiple Windows sessions and servers. You can scale application availability in instances, user accesses, and failover scenarios. To achieve optimal resource utilization and avoid server overload.

Some of the benefits of load balancing are:

  • Avoid overload by distributing the connections among different servers
  • Minimize response time
  • Improve reliability and redundancy
  • Provide failover control

If you conclude that your environment would benefit from load balancing, Thinfinity Remote Workspace allows you to choose between two possible architectures. This decision is essential in hardware scheme planning and system configuration to work in a distributed way.

 

Scenario 1: One Gateway and multiple Broker Servers

In this simple scenario, a single Gateway distributes the connection load between several Broker Servers.

 

Scenario 1 One Gateway and multiple Broker Servers

 

 

Scenario 2*: Multiple Gateways and multiple Broker Servers

This second scheme comprises multiple Broker Servers, multiple Gateways, and the DNS Server, its domain name associated with all the available Gateways’ IPs.

 

Scenario 2 Multiple Gateways and multiple Broker Servers

*Note: this method requires a round-robin DNS configuration and is not exemplified in this tutorial. 

 

Configuring Load Balancing in Thinfinity Remote Workspace

You first need to install the gateway component on your ‘Gateway Server’, then your broker component on your ‘Broker Server’.

  • Gateway Server

 

Open the Thinfinity InstallShield Wizard, then click on ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 9

 

Select ‘I accept the terms in the license agreement’ and click on ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 18

 

Select ‘Reverse Gateway Only’ and click on ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 1

 

Choose a ‘Destination Folder’ and click on ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 7

 

Now that everything is set up, click on ‘Install’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 14

 

  • Broker Server

 

Open the Thinfinity InstallShield Wizard, then click on ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 9

 

Select ‘I accept the terms in the license agreement’ and click on ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 8

 

Select ‘Broker and HTML5 Services’ and click on ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 7

 

Choose a ‘Destination Folder’ and click on ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 7

 

Now that everything is set up, click on ‘Install’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 14

 

To guarantee that the Load Balancing environment performs appropriately, you should look for the following items:

  • The Network ID
  • IP Bindings (in the Gateway Manager)
  • The Gateway URL (in the Broker Server)

The Network ID

The ‘Network ID’ must be the same across all gateway(s) and broker(s).

You can modify the Network ID to any value since it doesn’t follow a specific format:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 17

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 3

IP Bindings

In the General tab, you would need to configure the Port and Bindings for the user (browser client) to reach Thinfinity Remote Workspace. 

You can do so by selecting the default connection and clicking on ‘Edit’. 

For instance, the address ‘http://Server_IP:9443’ is based on the settings below:

Check the box ‘Enable external access in Windows Firewall’ as well.

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 16

The Gateway URL (in the Broker Server)

Now that the gateway is configured, add the gateway(s) URLs on the Broker Manager:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 19

 

Configuring the License Server Manager

When installing Thinfinity Remote Workspace Server in a Load Balancing environment, you need to use our ‘License Server Manager’ to pool the licenses between the back-end broker servers. You can see how this is configured below:

Open the License Server Manager on the machine in which the gateway is installed.

On this screen, click ‘Add’, and a menu will open, where you would need to select ‘Thinfinity® Remote Workspace 6.0’:

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 15

Check the ‘Activate a Serial Number online’ option and press ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 6

 

Here, complete the fields ‘E-Mail’ and ‘Serial’ and press ‘Next’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 2

 

After the registration is complete, hit ‘Finish’:

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 12

Configuring the License tab

On the ‘License’ tab, configure the email address and serial number registered on the License Server Manager.

On the Primary Field, write the licensing server URL, the URL of the app’s installed server, and add port 7443.

Example: https://Server_IP:7443.

Select the ‘Use licensing server’ box, click ‘Apply’, and restart the Thinfinity service.

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 13

Verifying the server connection to the gateway

To verify if the Broker Servers are connected to the Gateway Servers, you can check the log file by clicking on ‘Show Log’:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 10

It should say something like:

Server started. Listening HTTP on port 8443.

Broker: Connecting to http://127.0.0.1:8443/

Broker: Registered on http://127.0.0.1:8443/

Web Server: Connecting to http://127.0.0.1:8443/

Web Server: Registered on http://127.0.0.1:8443/

 

There are a few things to take into account when using Load Balancing:

 

All the Broker Servers have to share the same profiles. To this end, you can copy the database file ‘profiles.bin’ and distribute it to all the servers. You’ll find this in the following path:

 

C:\ProgramData\Cybele Software\Thinfinity\Workspace\DB

 

If you use One-Time-URL, you’d need to share the ‘Root Path’ for Temporary Folders. This will also ensure the users have consistency with their intermediate disk (ThinDisk) when they access files from the file manager or upload/download files:

 

Use Thinfinity Load Balancing - Step 4

 

Remember that if you only install the broker service on a server, you must register the license using the License Server Manager.

Have any questions?

Book a call today to learn more about how Thinfinity® can help your organization. We are always available to guide you and provide the best solution based on your specific needs.

Leave a comment

Privacy Preferences
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.