Install Your Own Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB)
Most of the data centers in India provide you with a Local Load Balancer that helps you to divert traffic. In other words, directing traffic between multiple servers at the very same data center facing any service that you provide.
In my last article, I was talking about Load Balancer, In this article, I will explain how Netspace (India) deals with the need for a Global Server Load balancer that several organizations eventually confront.
What is Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB)?
Global server load balancing (GSLB) is a method of distributing network traffic across multiple servers in different locations.
It helps to ensure high availability of a service by routing user requests to the server that is best able to handle them in terms of performance, capacity, and location.
GSLB can be implemented in a number of ways, including DNS-based GSLB, which uses DNS records to redirect traffic to the optimal server, and anycast-based GSLB, which uses network routing protocols to direct traffic to the nearest server.
GSLB can be used to balance load across servers in a single datacenter or across multiple datacenters in different geographic locations. It is often used to support mission-critical applications that require high levels of availability and performance
Who needs a Global Server load balancer?
Global server load balancing (GSLB) is used by organizations that need to ensure high availability of their services, especially those that are mission-critical or have a large user base. Examples of organizations that might use GSLB include:
E-commerce websites that need to handle a large number of user requests and transactions
Online gaming companies that need to support millions of users around the world
Banks and financial institutions that need to provide reliable access to online banking and other services
Healthcare organizations that need to provide access to electronic medical records and other sensitive information
In general, any organization that relies on a web-based service and wants to ensure that it is always available to users could benefit from GSLB.
There are two different reasons why Companies move to multiple data centers:
High accessibility
In this situation, you have hit the point at which your company can’t endure the chance of housing everything in one building or area. To defend the company, you generally either bring up a totally offline backup data centre in the event of a catastrophe, or you run several active, always-on data centres.
Data locality
Some businesses will need to conduct many data centers for jurisdictional or regulatory factors. By way of instance, for information privacy reasons you might have to stay Indian data center within India, or for performance reasons you might need to ensure that your clients in Asia get all their data from the data center in Asia.
Importance of GSLB
Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) is important because it helps organizations to ensure high availability and improve the performance of their services for users accessing them from different regions.
High Availability: GSLB helps to ensure that users are directed to the nearest or most available server, reducing the risk of downtime and improving the overall availability of the service.
Performance: By directing users to the server that can best handle their requests, GSLB can help to improve the performance of the service and provide a better user experience.
Disaster recovery: GSLB can also be used to distribute traffic among multiple data centers or cloud regions, providing a way to redirect traffic in case of a disaster or outage in one location.
Cost Savings: By directing traffic to the nearest or most available server, GSLB can help to reduce the cost of delivering services, particularly for organizations that operate globally.
User experience: By directing users to the nearest server or the server with the lowest load, GSLB improves the user experience, as the time to access the service is faster.
Setup Global Server load balancer
While it is possible to implement global server load balancing in-house, the challenges of keeping data synchronized at multiple sites – and load balancing across the sites efficiently – are not trivial.
Setting up a Global Server Load Balancer (GSLB) typically involves the following steps:
Identify the servers that will be part of the load-balanced pool: These servers can be located in different regions or data centers, and should be configured to handle the same types of requests.
Configure a Domain Name System (DNS) server: This server will be used to direct clients to the appropriate server based on factors such as server load, geographic location, and network conditions.
Create DNS records: Create DNS records for each server in the load-balanced pool, and configure the DNS server to use a load-balancing algorithm to determine the best server to direct clients to.
Configure health checks: Set up health checks to monitor the status of the servers in the load-balanced pool. If a server is down, the load balancer will redirect traffic to another available server.
Test the configuration: Test the load balancer configuration by simulating client requests and monitoring the performance of the servers.
Deploy: Once the configuration is tested and validated, deploy the configuration on a production environment.
Please note that the exact steps to set up a Global Server Load Balancer may vary depending on the specific load-balancing technology or service being used.
We can set up a global server load balancer above any of our Web Hosting Services.
Netspace (India) Provides a global load balancing service as a Managed Cloudflare DNS service to our customer as Global Load Balancer our DNS-based load balancer keeps track of live application servers and does routing accordingly (In case of failover).
Conclusion
In conclusion, global server load balancing (GSLB) is a method of distributing network traffic across multiple servers in different locations. It is used by organizations to ensure high availability, improve performance, balance load geographically, scale their services, and reduce costs. GSLB can be implemented using DNS or anycast, and can be used to balance load across servers in a single datacenter or across multiple datacenters in different geographic locations.
Shashi kant Pandidhar
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