The Front End URL
In a production environment, all users and all
webMethods applications that communicate with the
My webMethods Server cluster need to use the Front End URL established for the cluster, described in
Setting the Front End URL. In addition, a production cluster should include the use of a load balancer or external web server, as shown in
High Availability in a My webMethods Server
Cluster.
In practice, users log into the Front End URL through the load balancer. In turn, the load balancer distributes calls to the nodes. A cluster can have only one Front End URL.
Note: The load balancer must be set up to use sticky sessions. A user session, once established, is routed to the same server machine until the session is closed.
When an HTTP request is issued to produce a My webMethods Server page, My webMethods Server uses the actual host name and port number of that request, no matter how the request is routed: directly or indirectly through the load balancer or web server. In these cases a Front End URL is not necessary.
For several use cases, like generating My webMethods Server URLs from within email notifications or creating links to tasks from within Task Engine, Front End URL configuration is required because no HTTP request is available at that time.