Aspects of the invention pertain to user session management in load balanced clusters. Multiple application servers communicate with a central data server to ensure there is a single session per user ID. The central data server maintains a user session index and a parameter table. Each time a network access is attempted using a given user ID, a load balancer assigns the session to one of the application servers. The assigned application server queries the central data server to determine whether a session status for the user's login ID is inactive or active. If inactive, a new, unique value is assigned as the session number. If active, the session number is evaluated to determine whether multiple sessions exist. In this case, one of the sessions is terminated to ensure a single session per user ID. Preferably, the terminated session is the earlier session.