Server load balancing is a technology that distributes high volumes of load across multiple servers in a network in order to deliver speed and performance for users. Load balanced servers ensure that no single server is overcome by extra load thus the data is available to all the users at one single time.
To setup a load balanced network, high configuration dedicated servers are deployed in a network administered by a load balancer to distribute the traffic.
Network load balanced servers are usually deployed by large companies and organisations with complex business processes and thousands of customers who access the servers at any given single time. News websites, video streaming websites and social networking websites are some examples where a load balanced setup would be typically used given the amount of data and traffic on the servers.
Businesses maintaining a large network of servers to accommodate their large corporate data also require a load balanced infrastructure to evenly distribute the load among all the servers so that each individual server’s processing power is used optimally and intelligently. An advanced load balanced setup directs user requests to the servers that have the least load thus ensuring the fastest response times.
Load balancing ensures a resilient, highly available network with fault tolerance because of one server in the network goes down; the requests on that server are handled by the next in line server in the cluster. With high availability, reliability is achieved as there is no effect on speed or performance even if one server in the network goes down. Similarly, if an application on one server fails, it will remain available from the next server in the network.
This has another advantage in the case of planned maintenance. The entire network need not go down or offline for software or hardware maintenance. It can be carried out one server at a time while services remain available from the other servers.
Greater scalability is another benefit of network load balancing. When greater storage or processing power is required, enterprises can simply ask the service provider to deploy extra servers to the network quickly and seamlessly.
Disaster recovery is a crucial part of any enterprise’s IT solution. Distributed load balancing can achieve DR services by redirecting user requests to servers in a DR data centre in the event of a disaster at the primary data centre. The load balancing device determines which server will be most capable to process the request and then sends the request to that particular server.
Load balancing solution can be created on both Linux and Windows dedicated servers. Large businesses with resource intensive applications, large volumes if increasing data and constant traffic require high availability, stability and scalability to ensure customers can reach their services and products at anytime from anywhere.
