Server Cluster Architecture Basics

A Load Balanced Server Cluster is a system of two or more servers that act cooperatively to deal with heavy traffic and/or heavy resource usage. This allows traffic going to just one website (or a collection of sites) to be handled by more than one server.

Each cluster consists of a number of servers, called nodes. Each node plays plays a specific role, allowing your website to sustain high traffic.

The Cluster Manager Node is the core of the cluster, and provides load balancing to distribute the incoming traffic across one or more web nodes. It also acts as the primary storage location of the cluster for the actual content along with the sites database.

The Web Nodes serve your users directly, and are connected to the primary database/file server via a private, gigabit ethernet network. These nodes provide the actual content from your site.

On very high traffic sites we can take the clustering a step further and separate the database server from the cluster manager. This allows there to be one or more replicated dedicated servers in the cluster to handle database requests.

All of our cluster plans include our management service at no extra cost.