What is Clustered Hosting Services

Sunday, 09 January 2011

Clustered hosting services are a type of hosting service that makes use of multiple machines to perform the job of hosting.  This is done in nodes and is primarily caused by the need to run multiple types of software and services that should be separated from a server for optimal performance.

Explaining Clustered Hosting

The way that clustering works is simple and can be explained as:  Services which are able to run together without conflict are left on one machine.  There are many machines which have services put on them and are designed to be clustered together with software that performs load balancing.  The load balancing eliminates needing the server to be running at all times and can easily transfer server resources to other locations without having to put too much stress on the system.

Clustering makes it much simpler to provide updates to the webhost servers without having to lose access to the website.  This makes it possible to be updating a website live while it is still in use by visitors, customers and other individuals.

Clustering works very much like cloud hosting and can be scalable by adding or removing machines from the cluster either manually or on demand when it is necessary.  The clustering is very useful for large businesses and websites that are larger as well.  Clustering can help reduce the load of a single server and distribute the amount between a large numbers of servers and make a website load much faster or provide services with fewer bouts of lag.

A wide variety of sites that do use clustering to help with the tasks of server-side software and processes such as FTP, email, MySQL and others really helps to increase the speed and usability of the website.  Many of the traditional dedicated server websites are turning to clustered hosting to ensure that the entire website is not down at one time.  This is a very simple solution to problems with a webhost that continually has downtime with a particular website.

It is still recommended that only larger websites make use of the clustered hosting services because the spread of a small website between several nodes may actually decrease performance when trying to call between the multiple servers to load different portions of the website.  Clustered platforms such as these can be easily integrated into most websites and provide a valuable distribution of the load where resources can be better used and better managed by the complete system.

Clustered services may be more expensive in some instances but this higher cost will help to reduce the amount of time that a website is down.  This means that any website that uses cluster hosting correctly will have increased speed in services and better distribution of tasks between servers to have a faster and more efficient website.  Many of the cluster hosting options are self regulating and can be chosen to be whatever size is needed with a hosting package that can allow for on demand additions as well.