Clustered Web Hosting: Division of Resources

Clustered hosting is a highly used technology. It is a type of hosting in which the whole load of the machine is distributed across several clusters so that the availability of the resources is high and the services are easily available.

Large organizations implement clustered hosting so as to manage front end webservers and back-end database servers. By cluster we mean a group of physical machines or we can say computers which performs a specific task.

The main working of clustered hosting is that a single machine or resource is used by multiple hosts’ services that request it that includes web, database and FTP. A single physical machine does not have the capacity to handle traffic coming through a lot of websites. Website traffic can create a lot of problem.

The technology that is used in clustering services is load balancing in which the whole load of one physical machine is divided into several physical machines so that the chances of failure are very less and it also increases the chances of availability of a website for a lot of services.

Clustered hosting and cloud hosting are very much same in the sense that they both provide resources for the users to be used on demand and it makes the website more scalable.

• Advantages of Server Clustering
• Server clustering offers high availability. If a server is unable to provide service to the user then another server of the same cluster can perform its task.
•  Server clustering is a scalable solution. Resources can be added to the cluster as per requirement.
• The maintenance of the cluster servers is very easy.
• Disadvantages of Server Clustering
• Server clustering requires more servers and hardware to manage and monitor, as a result increasing the infrastructure which increase its complexity.
• Server clustering is not flexible in nature because all servers cannot be clustered and many of the web applications are not supported through clustered design.
• It is not a cost-effective because it needs a good server design which can be quite expensive to afford.

Apart from having some disadvantages, server clustering is still a great technology and service to ensure high availability of application resources.