On-Demand Web Server Load Balancing for the Rest of Us: TZO
Most web sites are supported by multiple servers, even small firms quickly graduate beyond a single server as traffic builds. It is important that server loads are distributed in a balanced way and that failed servers are detected and traffic routed to others in the network. Optimizing load balancing has usually meant an expensive hardware purchase with associated implementation and administration costs, limiting access to these resources to large enterprises with big IT.
I spoke recently with Chris Cook, the Director of sales and Marketing at TZO, a Boston-based firm that is offering load balancing as an on-demand software service at dramatically reduced price points. Like many Saas offerings it offers a reduction in ongoing costs, eliminates large upfront investments, and provides the flexibility to opt in or out as business conditions change. The firm started as a web domain name service and added AutoFailover in 2001. With AutoFailover, when TZO detects a server failure it automatically updates the DNS record for a domain so that the server requests are sent to the IP address of alternate servers or server clusters. The key being very short propagation times eliminating any realized down time.
