Who needs a load balanced server?

Many a times on a server it becomes extremely difficult to estimate the number of request that server will receive. Therefore, load balanced servers are important so that the distribution, processing and communication activities happen evenly throughout the server without overwhelming any one component. Websites that get a lot of traffic ideally make use of two servers so that if requests to one of them increase, the rest that follow can easily be directed to the second server.

Why is load balancing of servers needed?

If you have only one server to deal with all the traffic that your website gets means that if that server is hampered due to any reason, your website will fail to be accessed by users. Also, if your site gets enormous amounts of traffic it is a good idea to invest in two servers so that in case of one server being busy the requests of access can be automatically forwarded to the second one. It is not wise to keep upgrading the server size so that it can accommodate more requests. The best thing would be to add more load balanced servers.

The load of a website must equally be distributed among a group of server it has that are known as ‘server clusters’. Load balancing is essentially in order to not stop the normal functioning of the website and provide access to it all the time. Load balancing can be done on all types of servers, but here we shall discuss the HTTP server specifically.

About load balancing mechanism - IP Spraying

Even though a website may have a group of servers, they must appear as a single load balanced server to the internet browser. When HTTP requests are made to any of these sites they get evenly distributed among the different servers they have. This mechanism is known as ‘IP Spraying’. This is done with the help of a ‘load dispatcher’ or ‘network dispatcher’. So basically, when the IP sprayer encounters any request, it automatically distributes them among the server cluster. This reduces the chances of failed attempts to access a website by the surfer.