1-800-HOSTING Blog » Load Balancing http://blog.800hosting.com Inside 1-800-HOSTING Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:00:58 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Do I need a dedicated database server? http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/06/do-i-need-a-dedicated-database-server/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/06/do-i-need-a-dedicated-database-server/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:47:32 +0000 Jay Ellison http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=710 Well not always, but typically, yes. If you just want to sort your wedding or vacation pictures for family viewing, then probably not. Otherwise, three very good reasons why you should consider it are Security, Performance, Scalability.

Security:
The database should be accessible only by the front-end application server and not accessible by or open to the Internet. To accomplish this, private IPs are used to connect the public http server with the private database server. We use our Private Backend Network (PBN) or add a cross-connect cable between the servers creating private LAN communications. The database server has no public IP nor Internet access. Only the http server has a public IP address.

Performance:
Database applications are generally resource intensive. When you run web/application/database/e-commerce/dns/email services (or any combination) on the same server, you are taking resources away from the database application. Database applications will typically use all the RAM you can throw at them, and you don’t want your visitors waiting for database queries to load. You want it fast, because they want it now!

Scalability:
You hope the millions of dollars you’ve budgeted to promote your site will allow your business to grow rapidly, so you can someday retire a wealthy tycoon – spending your days on the beach sipping your favorite beverage while basking in the sun – right? Create an environment now for that rapid growth that easily allows for scalability. MS SQL and MySQL database applications integrate tools for data replication services – the ability to duplicate the data to multiple servers. A replicated database environment can offer two (2) distinct benefits; 1. performance (utilizing load balancing of multiple db servers) and 2. high-availability (preservation of data in the event of a single server failure).

Need help customizing an environment to meet your needs for security, high-availability, performance and scalability? Just ask – it’s what we do best.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/06/do-i-need-a-dedicated-database-server/feed/ 0 What is load balancing and why do I need it? http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/05/what-is-load-balancing-and-why-do-i-need-it/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/05/what-is-load-balancing-and-why-do-i-need-it/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 21:32:00 +0000 Christopher Shaffer http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=370 We have many customers who as their sites, applications, or services become more popular outgrow the capacity and performance that a single server can provide. I could write a book on the evolution of a website or application, and how the architecture needs to evolve as its traffic doubles, triples, and quadruples exponentially, but for the purposes of this article I’ll use my unmatched Microsoft Paint skills to outline the load balancing concept in a simple manner.

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Imagine you have a user who is at their personal computer and wants to purchase something from your online store, or connect to your next great internet idea application. That user connects to your server following the path to eventually reach your server hosted here at 1-800-HOSTING. What happens when you have more users connecting than your server can support, and the end user experience begins to suffer as response and page load times start to increase? The 1st thing most people try is to throw more hardware at the problem through bigger and better servers. This works for a time but isn’t a permanent solution. The next thing is to scale outwards (horizontally) with additional servers (nodes) providing the same function. This is where load balancing comes in by way of a separate device designed to distribute the traffic to the available servers. There are many ways to distribute the traffic based on individual requirements, but it’s safe to say it balances the traffic evenly between your available resources. When combined with fail over functionality, you also can achieve redundancy should one of the servers experience a problem and need to be taken out of the available “pool” of servers.

Sales plug: 1-800-HOSTING provides both dedicated and shared load balancing services for all of our clients and are skilled at explaining how load balancing can work for you, as well as implementing it for your existing services.

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