Thread: An Introduction to clustered Hosting

What is Clustered Hosting?
To understand clustered hosting, it helps to understand the more traditional model, which is standalone server hosting. With this system, all web services are run on one machine - everything from the website control panel to the email server to file transfer protocols. This is obviously a lot for a single machine to cope with. You can see this with your own PC. If you have lots of programs all running at the same time - email, web browsing, word processing, anti-virus protection and so on -
they inevitably run slower than if you had just one or two running at the same time. Use too many at once, and they start to slow down or fail altogether.Exactly the same thing happens with standalone web servers. Indeed, the problem is even more acute for web hosting companies, because one server has to cope with multiple web sites. So it's not difficult to imagine why websites go down from time to time. You might even think it's something of a miracle that they're available as often as they are! Clustered hosting aims to alleviate this problem by sharing the burden of running website programs across several servers. This is like having multiple jet engines on an aircraft - if one or two fail, the rest can keep the plane in the air until it's safe to land. Clustered hosting protects each website from its neighbors. If your website runs a particularly heavy database, for instance, the fact that it's distributed across several servers means that other websites won't be affected by what you're doing, and vice versa. Clustered hosting also minimizes the effects of sudden spikes in traffic or bandwidth use. This is also a useful solution to the problem of rebooting and upgrades. Rather than taking down the entire network when a reboot is required, websites can be kept running on other servers in the cluster whilst the reboot or software upgrade is rolled out across individual servers by degrees. In the end, if you're looking to host your business online, you need to make clustered hosting part of your due diligence process.

Clustering servers together isn't a new concept at all. Cloud hosting clusters servers together to alleviate stress amongst servers. It is the new standard now.

Thanks a lot for this interesting and useful information about Clustered Hosting service.

As I am newbie so it added some plus point in my knowledge concern to this.

Basically, clustered hosting is mostly prefered by multiple mission-critical websites or resource intensive applications that requires 100% uptime guarantee and high availability, greater flexibility, greater security and higher stability.

Instead of one server, your website depends on the resources of multiple servers. These servers are generally located in different physical areas. If one of them goes offline, the other servers in the cluster will pick up the load, assuring that your site stays online.

Originally Posted by simplyamazing12

Clustering servers together isn't a new concept at all. Cloud hosting clusters servers together to alleviate stress amongst servers. It is the new standard now.

Well stated !!

Cluster Hosting is nothing but Cloud hosting wherein a number of dedicated servers are connected in a network and forms a cluster of servers sharing the resources of each other. We may also say that it acts as a single server as a whole (though not practically). The sites hosted in such a cluster uses the resources of the entire cluster.

Thanks for all the members for sharing more info on clustered hosting services.

Guys cluster hosting is not limited with only cloud computing. I guess, all you have forgotten about the load balanced servers.....And honestly when cloud hosting is keep buzzing in the market one thing need to be said there is no such thing as a cloud; it is a cluster of servers that to the end user just feels like one server....

Originally Posted by paullopez

Guys cluster hosting is not limited with only cloud computing. I guess, all you have forgotten about the load balanced servers.....And honestly when cloud hosting is keep buzzing in the market one thing need to be said there is no such thing as a cloud; it is a cluster of servers that to the end user just feels like one server....

Exactly. Everyone assumes Cloud is just one magical server but in reality it is a combination of servers from all over storing your content and allowing access when needed. It evenly distributes the content throughout the servers to keep performance high. It isn't a new concept - Just a new development in technology allowing the concept to be used.

That's interesting to read.