In this day and age, Internet has become an integral part of our lives where we browse numerous sites every day. Every website that we access is hosted on some server owned by a web hosting service provider. These web hosting companies provide the service and technologies needed to host a website. Depending on their quality of service and reliability many of these web hosting companies earn the reputation of being the best Windows hosting company, the best web hosting company or the top cloud hosting company.
These companies offer various plans when it comes to web hosting. These plans are majorly divided into categories depending on the factor if the server is a shared server or a dedicated server. The kind of server on offer plays a significant role when it comes to web hosting.
In the context of data and servers, understanding the concept of load balancing becomes important. Load balancing refers to the distribution of network traffic across multiple servers to use resources optimally, reduce response time, improve application responsiveness and enhance performance and reliability. This ensures that no single server has to deal with too much demand as it distributes data uniformly across servers or network resources such as clusters, disk drives, network links, to name a few. Load balancing helps to maintain a good user experience.
Load balancing is aided by a load balancer which distributes incoming application traffic among multiple instances. In order to prevent a server from being overloaded with incoming requests, a load balancer is placed between the endpoint device and the web server. The server could be on-premises, in a data center or the public cloud. The server can also be physical or virtualized. This load balancer can either be a physical device or a software that is run on a virtual machine or it can be a combination of both. Load balancers run continuous health checks on servers to ensure they can handle requests.
In order for a load balancer to determine the device within a particular server farm which will be the best able to process an incoming data packet, it has algorithms in place. These algorithms are programmed to distribute loads in a specific way.
Different algorithms are used by different load balancing methods to best suit a particular situation. Let us have a look at some of these in no particular order. There is the Least Connection Method which directs traffic to the web server which has the fewest active connections. It is the most useful when there are a large number of persistent connections in the traffic that are unevenly distributed between the servers.
Next is the Least Response Time Method which directs traffic to the web server which has the fewest active connections and the lowest average response time. Then there is the Round Robin Method which rotates servers by directing traffic to the first available server and then moves that server to the bottom of the queue. It is highly useful when the web servers are all of equal specifications and there are not many connections that are persistent. Another one is the IP Hash where the IP address of the client determines which server receives the request.
Load balancing provides many benefits. One of these benefits has to do with security. The off-loading function of a load balancer defends any website against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks which account for a substantial portion of cybercrime. It shifts the attack traffic from the particular corporate server to a public cloud provider. Hardware defense mechanisms, such as a perimeter firewall, are a costly option and needs a considerable amount of maintenance. Software load balancers with cloud offload provide efficient and at the same time a very cost-effective solution for protection.
Load balancing improves scalability. Website traffic can surge any time. This sudden surge in traffic can often lead to server failure when the web server is unable to handle the unexpected extremely high amount of traffic. This problem can be resolved by load balancing which distributes the traffic evenly to ensure that your web server isn’t burdened. It helps to improve scalability.
Increased flexibility is also one of the advantages that comes along with load balancing. Conducting regular website maintenance checks is important. In the context of any security related issue, load balancing helps to avoid downtime by shifting the load of an affected server to other servers while fixing it.
Load balancing ensures reduced failure rates which in turn ensures that the customer experience of your website is not hampered. A sudden increase in website traffic can lead to increased website load time and reduced scalability as well as hardware failure if your server is unable to bear the load.
Load balancing also enables you to monitor your website communication channels regularly and ascertain if your website server is performing optimally or not. If there is an issue, then you can fix it before it is too late, in order to avert website failure.
With a multitude of benefits to offer, load balancing has indeed become indispensable. It helps to have flexible networks that are well-equipped to handle any new challenge while enhancing security, performance and service.
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