Archive for the 'Server Clustering' Category

Dedicated Server Hosting Benefits

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

There are several reasons as to why an individual, business or other organization might decide to use a dedicated server to host their websites. Dedicated server hosting can provide many benefits to a hosting client depending on their particular needs and the function of their website.

Dedicated server hosting is typically more reliable and secure than shared hosting services. There are many excellent shared hosting providers, but dedicated hosting provides a good deal more stability and security. When utilizing dedicated hosting services, a customer does not need to worry about sharing a server with other websites. Only their website or in some cases websites will be hosted on that server.

By having a dedicated server just for their website, hosting clients can avoid many of the potential pitfalls of shared hosting services. With dedicated server hosting, a customer does not need to worry that the server will be overloaded due to an excess number of websites being hosted on one web server. A client also does not need to worry about another website on the web server having bad coding or scripts that would affect the hosting and performance of their own website.

Dedicated server hosting allows a customer to customize their hosting experience, which is not usually the case with shared hosting services. Shared hosting packages include an assortment of applications and features. A customer often finds that many features are available that they do not need and others that they could use are not included with the shared hosting package. On the other hand, dedicated server clients can select the software and applications that are best suited to the needs of their website.

When to upgrade from dedicated web server to server clustering

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

When should you Upgrade from Dedicated Web Server Hosting to Clustered Server Hosting?

Dedicated web server hosting gives you much greater flexibility and control than virtual hosting, but it still has volume constraints and failures can be caused by a single point of error. Here are questions that should help you determine if it is time for clustered server hosting:

Are the services on my web server so critical that I can not afford them to be down even an hour or two? Dedicated web server hosting is much more robust that a virtual hosting, but there are still many single points of error that could cause downtime.

Are so many people trying to access the applications on my dedicated hosting server that it is becoming too slow? Good applications get a lot of use, however as you get many people using them at the same time the system slows down and productivity suffers.

Are so many people visiting my web site or trying to download information that it is becoming too slow? Getting a lot of visitors to your web site is great, but a single dedicated server only can handle so many requests for information before response time slows and potential customers leave.

Would placing applications on different web servers simplify troubleshooting performance issues? When too many things get loaded onto a single dedicated web server it is very difficult to tell what is causing the problem when troubles start.

Does the traffic volume or system load fluctuate greatly from high to low in unpredictable ways? Trying to handle wide swings in volume on a single dedicated web server is very difficult as you end up with too much or too little capacity.

Is my business growing so rapidly that I need an easy way to scale my web servers? Adding more web servers to handle growth to a properly configured cluster is very easy.

If you answered yes to any of these questions it is probably time to seriously consider migrating to clustered hosting.

Web Server Clustering

Friday, August 15th, 2008

What is Web Server Clustering ?

Web Server Clustering is where two or more web servers are configured to act as a single system. Web server clustering can improve the reliability and throughput of an Internet-based system. Troubleshooting and determining the root cause of problems also can be much simpler with web server clustering. However, clustering requires a great deal of technical knowledge if the system is to be properly set-up and maintained.

Advantages of Web Server Clustering

Clustering improves the reliability of Internet-based systems because it eliminates many of the single points of failure that are possible in a single web server system. For example, with web server clustering you could have two or more web servers supporting your Internet site. If one of the web servers fails your throughput might be impacted to some degree but the site would still be available on the second web server. In a single server system your site would be offline if this happened.

The throughput of a system can be vastly improved with clustering because you can put a load balancer in the system that will send traffic to the least busy resource. This also means clustering can handle huge swings in volume that may occur during the day.

Web server clustering also makes it much easier to troubleshoot systems if properly configured. Instead of having many different items loaded on one web server you can put similar programs on each web server so it is easier to determine if a problem is related to an application, database, bandwidth, etc.

Web Server Clustering Issues

The drawback to clustering is you have to know what you are doing. Web server clustering done right is easily scalable and easily maintained. Clustering configured wrong is a nightmare you don’t want to experience.