The web hosting industry has various ways of coping with data, its loading, its access, and its load-balancing. Various architectures are used to allow for the efficient use of data. One such digital architecture is clustered hosting.

What is Clustering?

Clustering, in server technology, is a term that is used to refer to a number of servers working together to increase the efficiency of bandwidth, data storage, and ensure redundancy. When servers are clustered they load-balance or evenly distribute the workload among themselves.

When it comes to a web hosting plan, clustering is when web servers are deployed as front-end systems that power clustered web hosting subscription of a customer. This means websites will have a drastically reduced downtime as the resources on one front-end web server are integrated with those of another one and then shared among the entire network of customers.

Why do you need Clustering?

The main reason clustering is used is to provide all the resources that are required by the clients’ sites that are hosted on the servers – even when they suddenly need more of them. Whenever there is a peak in usage of the resources, an automated system allocates the required hardware and bandwidth to the one that needs it the most.

In other words, a website owner who experiences a sudden surge in traffic or processing need not worry that the site will crash simply because there are no resources to allocate to it.

What are the Advantages of Clustering?

Speed: websites that are hosted in a clustering environment are served, or load, much faster than those that are on normal servers. The sharing of RAM power and CPU speed means a website will have all the resources it needs to work quickly and efficiently.

Shared Roles: in the clustering environment, servers are can be assigned specific roles, as opposed to having all of them perform the same tasks. Roles can be assigned depending on the amount of speed, disk space, and bandwidth that they have individually so it can all be used in tandem. This helps out in smoothing out website task performance rates as only one server will be addressed to perform a certain task instead of randomly assigning or repeating tasks.

Zero Downtime: because there are more than one server available to the clients’ websites the chances of the server going down along with the site is as near to zero as could possibly be. In case one server goes down, another one takes over.

Scalability: scaling up (or down) is a task that can be performed with relative ease. Because of the load-balancing effect of the cluster, adding or removing a server (or individual resources/features on a server) is easy and comes with no side effects as the environment continues performing without a hitch.

When it comes to the client, there is no need to predict or plan ahead for scaling up in case there is a rise of need for resources.

Efficiency: in case there is a need for maintenance – which will ensure there is a rise in performance – the hosting company doesn’t need to stop its servers to perform them. This means, the clients can expect the best of service as the company will continue to make their servers as efficient as they can without any inconvenience to the customer a la the “we will be back after a few minutes” messages we usually get when visiting a site that is hosted on a server that is undergoing “routine maintenance.”

Security: most (if not all) hosting providers do not make public the exact structure of their server clusters. This means, to anyone looking inside from the outside – like a hacker would – it would be difficult to know where a site is being hosted because of the reduced visibility of the underlying internal constitution of the server stack, which is a complicated affair depending on the size of the web hosting provider. In case the cloud is involved, the architecture becomes even more complicated.

All in all, this means websites that are hosted in these types of environments are much more secure.

Flexibility: a web hosting provider that has implemented the clustering architecture will be able to meet the demands of any of its clients’ requests because should there be any new requests for features that were previously unavailable, it can easily be arranged to start providing it because all it would take would be to add a new server in their cluster.

Are there any Disadvantages?

Now that we have seen all the advantages of web hosting in a clustered environment, anyone would obviously like to know if there are any disadvantages to it. Well, this architecture requires more than one server which means it is a little more expensive. But, that is only if the hosting providers decide to put the cost of their hardware on their clients.

Conclusion: clustered web hosting is a great way to go in the case of business websites that foresee a potential of growth in the near future.