Load Balanced Networking

Case Study: Implementing a Network Load Balanced cluster of servers to support a Web-based and Windows-based client application.

One of our clients was consolidating their world-wide use of a business modelling application so that it could be located and supported in the UK. Other sites would then access the application using the corporate Virtual Private Network.

They needed to run a pilot to correctly size the cluster of Windows 2000 servers required to provide access to hundreds of simultaneously connected users to both the Web and Windows-based version of this application. The cluster needed to be fault tolerant and provide instant recovery for the database and the users-data in the event of hardware failure of one of the servers.

Solution: Redstone configured a Network Load Balanced (NLB) cluster, with a fail-safe backend cluster, both for the database and the user-data. Each NLB node ran as a webserver and as an application server to allow users to logon and run either the Web-based or Windows-based client application on the cluster. Using load testing tools we correctly scaled the cluster to support the large number of users.

Related Topics:
Internet Security
Outsourced network management
Network auditing and Performance enhancement