Load balancing?

Question

I have an ASP.NET 2.0 application that is supposed to have lots of users probably connected at a specific period of time simultaneously. I would like to know how I can apply load balancing to the network that will serve my application to share the traffic between the several servers that will serve my application. I have found some articles about clustering but I have no idea about it. What kind of softwares or hardwares are required?

Answer 1

If you are looking to have fault tolerance then you will have to go for clustering. If you are looking for load balancing between server you need to look at NLB. Windows NLB is a cheap option and it can support upto 32 nodes. In case you want to implement windows clustering and NLB please visit http://networkloadbalancing.blogspot.com It has complete information on WLBS (windows NLB) and some information on clustering.

Answer 2

I hope the following information will help you a lot in understanding Load-balancing before going to implementation. Good luck!



First of all Load-balancing, by definition, is dividing the amount of work that a computer has to do between one or more additional computers so that more work gets done in the same amount of time and, in general, all processing get done faster.



There are 2 types of Load-balancing:

1. Software Load-balancing

2. Hardware Load-balancing



Software Load-balancing

- Pros

* Less expensive than hardware solutions.

* Some packages have many more configuration and customization options allowing specific tailoring to your needs.



- Cons

* Most packages cannot handle large sites or complex networks.

* Packages that will support larger systems require an abundant amount of hardware.





Hardware Load-balancing

- Pros

* Hardware-centric approach is typically more robust than software options.

* Processes traffic at the network level, which is nominally more efficient than software decryption.

* Work with any OS or platform.



- Cons

* Higher costs than normally associated with software based solutions.

Answer 3

I have used Windows Network Load Balancing several times to distribute the load across several web-servers. It's very simple to setup, just make sure you understand how it works, or it will confuse you a little. Here's a good article describing it. Although this is for a Terminal Server environment you can easily apply it to your own application:



http://www.brianmadden.com/content/article/How-to-Configure-Windows-Network-Load-Balancing-for-pure-Terminal-Server-environments



Good luck.

Answer 4

I often spend my half an hour to read this blog's posts daily along with a mug of coffee.

Answer 5

I think it depends