In BW6, regardless of how the process is implemented, only the process level configuration option called “Activation” can determine whether the application gets executed in active/active or active/passive mode. Furthermore the Activation mode is only applicable when the AppSpace is configured for “Managed Fault Tolerance”, otherwise the application is executed in active/active mode. Which means changes may not be required in your BW process if you decided to go with the load balancing option.

Load balancing an application may have other consequences depending on the transport or technology of the BW ProcessStarter/Binding that initiates the job. For example, if it is JMS based ProcessStarter, then you will not have issues since the JMS ensures only one queue receiver (BW application instance) receives the message. However if it is HTTP, then you will need a load balancer to forward the incoming request to one of the BW application instances. Also other technology based ProcessStarter, such as FilePoller, Timer, etc. can have other side effects when they are load balanced.

The BW6 active/active or active/passive paradigm is different than BW5. In BW6 all AppNodes (BWEngines) are always active/active, however the BW6 applications can be active/active or active/passive. For example Application1 can be active in AppNode1 and passive in AppNode2 but the Application2 can be passive in AppNode1 and active in AppNode2. This is not the behavior in BW5. In BW5, first we cannot run multiple applications in the same BW Engine and secondly, the BW Engine itself can be configured for active/passive mode.