Load Balancing with Parallels RAS

Load balance your entire IT infrastructure without complex network configurations or expensive add-ons. Parallels RAS load balances RDSH servers and internal components, such as RAS Gateway.

What is Load Balancing?

In an extensive computing system, a single server cannot always handle the network traffic load or demand. Load balancing ensures that networks run smoothly by spreading the network or application traffic across a group of servers.

Load balancers typically exist between client devices and back-end servers and distribute incoming requests to available servers capable of handling the request.

The primary function of load balancing is optimizing the use of resources available, maximizing throughput and minimizing response times. Load balancing uses multiple resources rather than a single component, increasing IT architecture availability and reliability.

Server Load Balancing

Server load balancing is easy to use and available out of the box from the first installation. It distributes user access among healthy servers hosting the same application, which improves response time, guarantees full optimization of the computing resources, and prevents any single point of failure.
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Resource-Based and Round-Robin

Parallels RAS allows resource-based or round-robin load balancing. Round-robin is a simple rotational-based mechanism that load balances the connections. The first request grants access to the first available server address, the second to the second server address, and so on.

Parallels RAS resource-based load balancing dynamically distributes the traffic between servers based on counters, such as number of existing user sessions, memory, and CPU utilization. In addition, it reconnects the disconnected servers by default, so users don’t lose any work or data.

Parallels RAS Front-End Load Balancing Using AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)

"This guide shows the step-by-step configuration for deploying Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) to front-end and load-balance a Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) environment."

-Christian Aquilina

Auto-Scaling with RDSH Template

Parallels RAS RDSH template allows the dynamic provisioning of RDS servers, automating the scaling of RDSH. It works by creating or removing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) clones of the specified RDSH server when requested by the template rules. Specific template rules can be set based on a workload threshold scenario. For instance, administrators can define how many RDS servers they need to manage a 20% increase in traffic.

Parallels RAS RDSH template enables organizations to dynamically scale up or down the number of RDS hosts by creating, removing, or employing RDSH servers on demand.

By creating and deploying RSHD on the fly, IT administrators can save a great deal of time and reduce their workload concern about possible excess traffic.

High Availability Gateway Load Balancing

HALB (High Availability Load Balancing) eliminates the constraints of multi-gateway environments by distributing incoming connections based on workload and dynamically directing traffic among healthy gateways. HALB also allows you to run many HALB appliances simultaneously, reducing the possibility of downtime and ensuring that applications are always available.

  • Unlimited number of gateways supported
  • Virtual appliance; OVA, VMDK & VDH
  • Redundancy—Virtual IP technology
  • SSL decryption offloading available

Redundancy–High Availability

Provide intelligent health monitoring of applications and intelligently redirect users away from issues before they disrupt their session. Check all relevant services before forwarding a connection to a particular server or gateway, and ensure complete Remote Desktop Services and gateway redundancy with automatic failover protection in the event of system failure or downtime.