Cost-effective heterogeneous web clusters
Markus A. Hitz, Farhan Mashraqi · 2005
Clustering of servers is commonly employed for the purpose of increasing availability, and performance of web sites. In general, the cluster consists of computers that are homogeneous in terms of applications and hardware in order to facilitate scalability, fail-over redundancy, and ease of load balancing. Typically, major Internet service providers, and large corporations use such systems. On the other hand, educational institutions and small business are faced with the task of providing various web-based services on a small budget, and with limited resources. We describe the design and implementation of an architecture that we developed for teaching web programming courses. The system is based on a heterogeneous cluster of servers, providing an extensible platform at a very reasonable cost. It is also suited for small business applications, whenever customized solutions -- not offered by hosting services providers -- have to be deployed in-house.