Prashanth's Weblog

GlassFish V2 Beta, the next major version of the open-source Java EE 5 application server, provides enterprise features such as clustering, administration, Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT), NetBeans IDE integration, native SOA support through Java Business Integration (JBI), and load balancing to support highly scalable, volume enterprise deployments for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 applications.

With the experience of working on Load balancer administration of glassfish, I can say the glassfish has Best in Class Load balancer administration. Reasons being

• Enhanced GUI capability and CLI commands to administer the LB configuration (Easy to use with a single command and single GUI page).
• Configuration changes can be pushed from DAS (Glassfish's Domain Administration Server) to Load Balancer automatically (pushed when events like deploy/undeploy/create/ delete-instance etc., occur). This can be achieved by setting up a SSL connection between DAS and load balancer. This will avoid the manual copying of loadbalancer.xml to the WebServer location.
• The monitoring data about load balancer can also be obtained, once SSL is setup (Currently we support this with AMX interface, the next release will have CLI and Admin Console support). More about this at Satish's Blog
  
• Support for Rolling Upgrade.
• Enhanced the LB configuration on glassfish to support LB policy (round robin, weighted and user defined) and configuration of weights for the glassfish Instances.

Also see the article by me on 'Setting Up F5 Networks' BIG-IP System With Sun Java System Application Server'. Expect to see a similar one for glassfish (shouldn't be much different).

Try these new technologies and blog about your experience using GlassFish in production deployment. We would like to know how GlassFish's reliability, performance, manageability, ease of use, and new features address your needs. You may also suggest new feature enhancements for the upcoming GlassFish V3 release. Please remember to mention the download location of GlassFish in your blog. I strongly encourage you to participate in this contest. The contest is also open to outside the US, please see the contest rules.

Its very EASY to participate.