On traditional hosting servers, all services are hosted and run in a single physical machine, including web, database, email, FTP and others. Any service failure could affect one another, even break down the entire server operation. Clustered hosting is a type of hosting that spreads the content and load of hosting across multiple servers to do different jobs, i.e. to make your website (and other hosted services) perform better, faster, always available while minimizing the chance of single point failure.
In regular hosting, your website and services are hosted on one server. In the event of server failure, you will face inconvenience such as your customers not able to view your website. And if email service is down, you will not be able to send or receive emails under the hosted domain.
In a clustered hosting environment, your website and services are hosted on more than one server to provide redundancy. If a server within the cluster crashes, the other available servers will take up the role of the server that has crashed.
Instead of hosting on a single server to process all requests, you can distribute the workload across multiple servers in a cluster to maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid overload.
For example, when visitors make requests to load your website, the load balancer will distribute the processing burden evenly or in some cases unevenly (in scenarios which servers are not of equal computing power) to all the web servers. Thus no single server is handling 100% of the web traffic, which failing could end up causing server overloading.
The chances of your website being taken down because of a malicious attack such as a DDOS attack are also reduced because there are many servers within the cluster which are able to take the strain of the attack together.
You get more powerful processing resources by integrating multiple processors and memory module integrated as an interlinked resource pool that is shared across your cluster. Your websites are not served by a single server, but multiple optimized servers that result in lightning-fast website loading speed.
If many visitors are viewing your website simultaneously, the load balancer will distribute the traffic to the available servers so that they work together to deliver the images, scripts and page content to your visitors in parallel.
Your back-end data (database) server is connected to the front-end web server, not directly to the Internet. The data is isolated and kept safe from malicious access. The security of your cluster can also be further strengthened with firewalls within layers.
Whenever the web server needs to provide the info for a visitor request, it locates the database and retrieves the exact pieces of data for the visitor.
You have the flexibility to configure the number of web servers, mail servers, database servers, load balancers, firewall switches, devices and the structure in your cluster to best suit your requirements.
Whenever you need a higher resource for a specific service, you can easily add more servers to the cluster which spreads the work around, ensuring degradation of service will not happen. Clustered hosting is perfect for those needing greater flexibility and room to expand.
Single Server Hosting | Clustered Servers | |
|---|---|---|
Server Load | A single server takes the entire burden to handle all services (web, email, database, DNS etc). | Services are specifically spread across multiple servers in a well-organized structure, making them easier to be managed, maintained and protected. |
Failure Risk | Single-point failure happens when hardware failure or server crash. | No single-point failure risk. |
Standby Server | No standby server to operate when a server failure happens. | Standby server always available to continue functioning when failure happens. |
Web content work load | All website contents & applications served by a single server. | Website contents & applications served by multiple servers in parallel action for faster delivery. |
Requests work load | 100% of requests are processed by a single server. | Requests are prioritized and distributed to multiple servers intelligently to speed up the response time. |
Database Security | Databases are stored in the same web server that is more vulnerable to malicious access. | Databases are securely stored in the back-end server and well protected from direct access. |
Firewall Protection | Limited firewall protection. | More firewalls can be set up within cluster layers for better security. |
Email Queue | Lengthy email queuing occurs when sending a massive number of emails. | Email queue is distributed to multiple mail servers to noticeably reduce the email processing time. |
DDOS vulnerability | More vulnerable to DDOS attack. | Smart load balancing to multiple servers reduces the chance of DDOS to crash your websites or applications. |
Downtime | Downtime happens during hardware maintenance and repair. | The server still continues functioning during hardware maintenance and repair. |
Scalability | Can only scale up (Adding more CPUs or memory to a single server) | Flexible to scale up (Add more CPUs and memory to a single server) and scale out (Add more servers to a cluster) |
Your complete All-in-one Business, Cloud, Digital and Ecommerce solutions provider
Known and recognised as Southeast Asia’s leading All-in-one Business, Cloud, Digital and Ecommerce solutions provider, powering over 160,000 customers globally.
We are your one-stop point for all that your business needs to build an online presence and grow your business to greater heights online.
We are equipped with the latest digital solutions at all times, that is best-suited for your business performance.
We are backed by excellent client confidence and satisfaction, and the products and services we offer carry credibility.
You’re all caught up! We’ll notify you when we have new announcements for you.
If your existing hosting with your current provider will expire in another 6-month time, we will extend your next renewal date of Exabytes hosting plan for 6 months free!
Your new hosting period with Exabytes: 12 months (new yearly hosting plan) + 6 months (free extension)
** We will extend your hosting for up to maximum of 12 months based on the balance of your remaining months with your existing provider.
If your existing hosting with other vendors will only expire in another 15 months time, we will extend your next renewal date of Exabytes hosting plan for another 12 months only as the maximum period we can extend is 12 months.
Your new hosting period with Exabytes: 12 months (new yearly hosting plan) + 12 months (free extension)
