| Load
balancing is a way of distributing the throughput or
processing requirements evenly among multiple servers
in a clustered environment. Load balancing allows a
computer system to easily handle large fluctuations
in volume to web sites or databases. Without load balancing,
one server could be under utilized while at the same
time another server was being swamped by requests.
Load Balancing -- Methods
Load
balancing can be accomplished with software, hardware,
or a combination of both. There are trade-offs to consider
in how to implement load balancing, so it is best done
by someone with load balancing expertise.
Load Balancing -- Benefits
While
load balancing improves the throughput and efficiency
of a computer system, it does not improve reliability.
Because of this, it is typical to combine failover capabilities
with load balancing to improve the robustness of the
system. |
