| A
server farm is where two or more servers are configured
to act as a single system. A server farm also is known
as a cluster. A server farm can improve the reliability
and throughput of an Internet-based system. Troubleshooting
and determining the root cause of problems also can
be much simpler with a server farm. However, a server
farm requires a great deal of technical knowledge if
the system is to be properly set-up and maintained.
Benefits
A
server farm improves the reliability of Internet-based
systems because it eliminates many of the single points
of failure that are possible in a single server system.
For example, with a server farm you could have two or
more web servers supporting your Internet site. If one
of the servers fails your throughput might be impacted
to some degree but the site would still be available
on the second server. In a single server system your
site would be offline if this happened.
The
throughput of a system can be vastly improved with a
server farm because you can put a load balancer in the
system that will send traffic to the least busy resource.
This also means a server farm can handle huge swings
in volume that may occur during the day.
A
server farm also makes it much easier to troubleshoot
systems if properly configured. Instead of having many
different items loaded on one server you can put similar
programs on each server so it is easier to determine
if a problem is related to an application, database,
bandwidth, etc.
Issues
The
drawback to a server farm is you have to know what you
are doing. A server farm done right is easily scalable
and easily maintained. A server farm configured wrong
is a nightmare you don't want to experience. |
