When choosing dedicated servers, it is important to understand the concept of load balancing and how it can help the overall performance of the server. Load balancing simply means to take the traffic coming into a site and spread it across a number of difference servers to literally lighten the load. This ensures that the site does not rely too heavily on a single server, and that even during traffic spikes all of the visitors will have a good and seamless experience.
The redundancy afforded by having multiple servers of the same information allows this to happen, and the intelligent load balancing system is a must have for any company that expects even a moderate amount of traffic.
How Does This Work?
In a typical setup, the traffic that comes through the Internet will then pass first through a firewall, and then on to load balancers. Those balancers, which are able to “see” current traffic on the site, will then choose the best destination for the traffic they are pushing through. This ensures that no single server will ever experience an overload. In a world where DDOS attacks, even on a minor scale, can disrupt a company’s business, having as many different precautions in place as possible is a good idea.
Why Is Load Balancing Important?
What would happen to the visitors to your site if something went wrong with one of your servers? Most of your traffic would be greeted with error messages if you did not have load balancing that could shuttle them off to a working server. In fact, the visitors would not experience an interruption in their visit at all. It would happen seamlessly and smoothly.
This improves performance, as well as the perception of performance that your visitors get when they are on your site. If someone were to visit your page and find that it wouldn’t load properly, and that they couldn’t access the information or the products they wanted, how often do you think they would return? Chances are that they wouldn’t. Instead, they would simply head to the competition that could give them a better experience. If your website doesn’t appear to be functioning properly, it erodes customer confidence. They start wondering if it is even safe to buy from you.
Another one of the great benefits to this type of system is that it makes it possible to take several servers offline for maintenance. The load balancing system will simply shuffle the visitors to those servers currently operating. Thanks to the flexibility offeredwith dedicated servers, it’s possible to scale up and down as needed. A very good example of this would be during the holidays. For those companies that sell items online, a huge influx of traffic could cripple them if they don’t upscale and add more capacity. After the holidays and when things start to slow down again, they can simply scale back.
If you want to be sure of having constant uptime, then you need to make sure you have load balancing as a part of your solution. E-commerce sites certainly need it, but any company that needs to maintain a reputation of being reliable will want to consider it as well. Even though having this option does generally increase the cost of running the dedicated servers, most find that it is well worth the price. Those who are considering moving to dedicated servers should always think about the benefits that load balancing will offer before making their final decision.