Web Hosting Geeks' Blog » load balancing http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog Web Hosting Industry News, Latest Trends, and Analyses. Thu, 24 May 2012 11:11:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Knowing When to Choose a Cloud Hosting Planhttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/knowing-when-to-choose-a-cloud-hosting-plan/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/knowing-when-to-choose-a-cloud-hosting-plan/#comments Mon, 09 May 2011 22:34:45 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=1586 The cloud hosting environment is revolutionizing the way website owners expand their operations and pay for hosting services. The term “cloud” refers to a network of servers that is used to provide supreme redundancy and task allocation, in order to ensure continual high performance for every website on the network. In other words, unlike conventional hosting plans which either assign a server to a single webmaster (dedicated hosting), or assign a server to a large group of webmasters (shared or VPS hosting), cloud hosting assigns an entire network of web server to every webmaster simultaneously. Of course, there is much more to the cloud hosting environment that makes it such a revolutionary hosting type.

Unique Load-Balancing Technology

When a visitor arrives at one of your sites their request is handled by a primary server, which then determines which server on the network would currently be most suitable for performing the requested task. This unique load-balancing technology allows you to continuously expand the size of your sites and your daily traffic levels without having to worry about exceeding limitations. These advantages would make it seem obvious that the cloud hosting environment is far more beneficial than any other on the market, however many webmasters are afraid of the uncertainty that cloud hosting provides in terms of billing and hosting capabilities, even though this “uncertainty” is the main advantage.

Are You Uncertain about Disk Space, Bandwidth, and Software Requirements?

If you are not sure which type of hosting plan would be most suitable for your planned online endeavors, but your intentions are to create a network of successful sites, cloud hosting would be perfect for your cause. Instead of applying strict limitations on the amount of bandwidth and disk space that can be consumed each month, cloud hosting gives you unlimited expandability instantly, by allowing you to access the entire network of cloud servers at any given time if needed. In addition, if you are unsure about the type of server you need (Windows or Linux), you’ll be pleased to learn that most cloud networks include servers that have several types of operating systems installed, so you’ll be able to accommodate the needs of all of your sites, regardless of software compatibility requirements. So how much does a service like this cost?

Are You Uncertain about Your Budget?

If you’re not sure about the amount of money that you are able to spend each month in order to maintain profitability in your planned endeavor, cloud hosting can solve this problem as well by providing a unique pay per usage billing structure. In other words, customers are billed at the end of each cycle based on the amount of bandwidth and disk space consumed during that month, and each gigabyte of bandwidth and disk space carries a set price. This “pay-as-you-go” billing structure, combined with the unique load-balancing technology, allows you to expand instantly without ever paying for more or less than is needed.

 

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]]> http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/knowing-when-to-choose-a-cloud-hosting-plan/feed/ 0 The Transition from Shared Hosting to the Cloudhttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/the-transition-from-shared-hosting-to-the-cloud/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/the-transition-from-shared-hosting-to-the-cloud/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:23:01 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=1543 Igor Seletskiy of CloudLinux recently gave a presentation on the move from shared web hosting to cloud hosting. During his presentation he focused on specifics element of CloudLinux that are significant aspects of cloud business and not discussed that often. Furthermore, Seletskiy reiterated that “cloud” should not be considered only a technical term for a type of computing, instead, it should be widely used as a marketing term.

Not Just a Term

However, this does not indicate that there is no such idea as cloud computing, that cloud resources are not real or that there aren’t a variety of benefits to using this type of hosting. On the other hand, there are performance hits when connecting to data storage as well as input-output performance issues, especially when running in production environments which can be difficult to repair.

Services from CloudLinux

CloudLinux is a business that helps hosts transition from shared hosting into a cloud VM environment as seamlessly as possible. This is typically completed in small intervals by limiting usage for individual users. This prevents any type of resource-spike that can impact other accounts on the same server. This also guarantees each customer will have dedicated access to a specified pool of resources.

High Variance of Performance between Hosts

Unfortunately this can be another issue with cloud hosting as performance varies greatly between hosting companies on a weekly and even daily basis. As always, it is important to conduct research before finding a cloud provider that meets your business needs.

Seletskiy recognized the number of benefits of running shared hosting in the clustered environment. However, most web hosting providers encounter the issue of difficult setup and continued maintenance despite being an inherently high-availability environment. Therefore, systems typically go down as a result of configuration errors and human errors.

Seletskiy suggests a load-balancing cluster which separates the traffic load among many smaller clusters. Load-balancing is one of the best features of cloud hosting as it spreads the load across all resources for better performance. CloudLinux is a resource to collaborate clustering efforts because they can take down clusters quickly and efficiently.

The newest trend in the web hosting industry as well as computing as a whole is being in the cloud. The cost is competitive with other types of hosting and it offers improved performance and efficiency for those who opt for the services.

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]]> http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/the-transition-from-shared-hosting-to-the-cloud/feed/ 0 Advanced Web Hosting Technologyhttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/advanced-web-hosting-technology/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/advanced-web-hosting-technology/#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:45:20 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=449 Along with the web hosting industry comes a lot of unfamiliar terms and technical jargon.  While some are self explanatory and a bit easier to process, others are downright confusing, especially to the newcomer who knows little to nothing about the industry.  This article will introduce you to some of the more advanced terms and explain their meanings.

Availability

Often referred to as uptime, the availability of a system describes its accessibility and ability to provide a level of redundancy that works to prevent failure at any single point.  For instance, if only one server is responding to HTTP requests, the server qualifies as a single point of failure.  If there are two web servers in a load balancing scheme, then the load balancer itself is the single point of failure.  Most high availability systems are equipped with efficient fault-tolerance mechanisms to ensure the necessary redundancies.  Because 100% availability is costly and rather difficult to achieve, the industry standard in the web hosting business is at around 99.9%.

Load Balancing

Load balancing is a method web hosting providers employ to more evenly distribute the system load over a group of available servers.  This technology is used to ensure that all servers process their fair share of requests without being overworked and more susceptible to failing.  There are many types of load balancers and these mechanisms come in both software and hardware varieties.

Response time and Transaction Load

The performance of a server is associated with the response time of a given transaction load.  In regard to a website, it is measured by the time it takes to load web pages and process requests to the web server.  The performance of large, high traffic websites can be greatly enhanced by upgrading hardware, residing on a dedicated server or utilizing load balancing technology.  In many cases, fine tuning software packages such as MySQL and PHP can also increase response times.

Scalability

The scalability of a system generally refers to the property that enables it to service any given load by upgrading hardware or incorporating additional services in a predetermined manner.  It essentially describes an instance in which performance and throughput can still be maintained once the load increases.  Scalability is a great quality to have in a web hosting solution as it can support the growth and increasing needs of your website.

Session State

Session state is often needed to maintain the connection of a client program and a given server.  This typically needs to be done to accommodate a user who is logged into the system.  If the topology consists of multiple servers, maintaining session state is crucial and something that must be taken care.  Most load balancing software applications on the market provide facilities that enable this to done.  The most common methods are implementing cookies and rewriting URLs with the server details included.  load_balance.htm

Throughput

Though closely tied to performance, throughput is best described as the number of concurrent transactions the server is able to process.  The higher the throughput, the more processing power to the system.

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]]> http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/advanced-web-hosting-technology/feed/ 0 How to Select the Approprite Load Balancing Technologyhttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/how-to-select-the-approprite-load-balancing-technology/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/how-to-select-the-approprite-load-balancing-technology/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:35:47 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=404 Load balancing is a hot topic in the web hosting industry as the technology is being increasingly used in server farms and shared hosting environments.  Its purpose is to fine tune computer systems and networks in a manner that better evenly distributes data and processing across available resources to prevent a single device from being overloaded.  Some of the busier websites utilize two or more servers in a load balancing scheme. Therefore, if one is overwhelmed, traffic is forwarded to another with more capacity.

Common Types of Load Balancing

The process of load balancing is one that can be achieved in a variety of ways.  If this is a technology you are interested in, it is best to know what methods are available to you.   After learning a little more about the types of load balancing, you will should be able to better determine which option works best.

Round Robin DNS Load Balancing

One of the earliest adopted techniques, round robin DNS load balancing uses the round robin feature built into the BIND DNS server to facilitate cycles through the IP addresses corresponding to a farm of servers  This is one of the easiest and most inexpensive methods to implement.  The downside to this type of load balancing is that the DNS server doesn’t have any knowledge of the server’s availability.  Therefore, there is a possibility that data could be continuously forwarded to an unavailable server.  There is also a chance that an IP address will be cached by other nameservers and not sent to the server designated for load balancing.

Hardware Load Balancing

With hardware load balancing, TCP/IP packets are routed by a device to numerous servers in a cluster, a method that leverages circuit level gateway to route traffic.  This method is said to create a powerful topology with a high level of availability.  The one big drawback is a cost that is often considerably higher than other methods.

Software-based Load Balancing

The software-based variation is the most commonly used load balancing method.  These type of load balancers are typically integrated as components in proprietary web servers and application server platforms.  This technique is more configurable and offers the ability to implement intelligent routing based on various input parameters.  In many cases, software-based load balancing requires additional hardware be provided to isolate the load balancers.

Narrowing Your Options

The decision of choosing a load balancing configuration based on hardware or software should be made on one’s particular needs.  For instance, if your website only requires load balancing to serve HTML pages or lightweight dynamic, data-driven pages, the round robin method should be sufficient.  On the other hand, if your traffic and data processes are more demanding, you would probably get the best performance out of the more advanced software or hardware methods.  Whatever method you take, keep in mind that the load balancer should be able to deliver intelligent monitoring to evenly distribute the load.  Depending on your situation, different techniques can better direct the loads to the servers that are more capable of handling them than others in the cluster.

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