What are Load Balanced Server Clusters?

In the early days of the Internet it was rare for a website or web application beyond the popular web portals to get enough traffic to warrant a dedicated server, let alone a suite of machines serving content. Today with 10+ years of the Internet behind us many sites have grown to need the horsepower harnessed by clusters of servers each handling a slice of the total traffic to a site. This slicing is done via a load balancer which directs traffic to servers in the cluster based on what's optimal for the site.

If your hosting company complains about the CPU resources used by your site or your existing dedicated server is buckling under the stress of your daily traffic, a load-balanced cluster may be a good fit. A simple non-load-balanced solution is simply to separate your database and web servers onto different physical machines. Using the InterWorx-CP software suite we can setup this base case and turn your two server cluster into a full load balanced solution when needed by simply flipping a switch, with no downtime!

Load-balanced clusters have traditionally been an expensive solution mainly because of the technical expertise required to assemble and maintain them. Over the last seven years we've optimized the deployment, management and reliability of our server clusters to not only provide raw horsepower and stability - but do it at dedicated server level pricing! The InterWorx Control Panel provides a single console where you can login to do all of the tasks you need for daily operations (stats, e-mail management etc).

Already have a load-balanced cluster and outgrowing it? No problem! We can add nodes instantly with zero downtime!

Server Cluster FAQ

Q. What about stats? Will my stats be messed up because there are multiple servers serving my site?

A. No, InterWorx-CP handles the log file re-combination and stat generation

Q. My site has a MySQL back-end, will it work on a cluster?

A. Most likely. Your site will at least work on a 2-server non-load-balanced setup and will most likely work on a load-balanced setup with more than two nodes

Q. Will I have to synchronize my content now that there are multiple servers involved?

A. No, InterWorx-CP takes care of all of the details and keeps your site in sync. You upload once and go!

Q. How big can a cluster be? My site is VERY busy!!

A. Big. We host sites with 20+ servers in their cluster and while it may take some designing to make a solution for your site work it can be done.

Q. I don't want to deal with all of the management, can you help with that?

A. YES - all of our clustering solutions are managed by default.

Check out our promos page for great deals on server clusters. Hurry, they're going fast!