Clustered hosting can quickly deliver results if you run an actuary or oil/gas exploration business. Trying to crunch numbers on a computer or server can be challenging. Not only can it be time-consuming, but it can be expensive. You’ll have to spend a lot of money on hardware, including RAM and CPUs. Clustered hosting can eliminate those headaches, in that this service virtualizes many servers, giving you superior power and speed in order to run your applications. You don’t even have to travel to a data center to run the jobs. Instead, you can sit at your computer, access the company’s website that specializes in cluster hosting, and run your jobs.

You don’t have to worry about cluster server configuration. If you need to make changes to your customer account, such as adding a new resource, these changes are automatically transmitted to every server in the application server cluster group. Your business will benefit from clustered hosting in the following ways:

1. Clustered hosting improves processing power and speed.

2. Clustered hosting provides you with layers of defense.

3. Clustered hosting saves you money.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Use clustered hosting to boost your computer processing power and speed

Clustered hosting allows you to take advantage of using the processing power of many servers. That way, your applications are allocated in real-time. If your business applications calculate complex equations or perform rendering, it can take forever using one server. You might have to wait hours or another day to get answers. However, with cluster servers, you can get quick results, possibly within minutes.

I recommend: Check out Sun Microsystems Inc.’s website. Sun is a leader in this field and makes some of the most powerful servers and processors. If you’re concerned about the environment, you’ll want to look at Sun because it leads in trying to conserve energy. Look at Tsunamic Technologies, Inc.’s website, where you can run your applications over the Internet anywhere or anytime. Tsunamic Technologies gives you complete control over your applications and data.

Provide your applications with layers of security with clustered hosting

Clustered hosting provides you multiple tiers of security, enabling you to have complete control over access to your account. Clustered servers offer you advanced security functions, including redundant switching fabric, intelligent routing, built-in firewall and proxy technology. As a result, clustered hosting can alleviate attacks, such as denial of service attacks, because they can be spread out over the clustered servers. So if an attack impacts one of the servers, it is automatically kicked out of the traffic managing the attack.

I recommend: Logicworks offers security services, including intrusion detection and prevention and VPNs (virtual private networks). One feature you’ll like with Logicworks is that it’s SAS 70 Type II-certified. Rackspace offers comprehensive 3 types of security services, including SecurePack, SecurePack-PCI, and SecurePack-Plus.

Save money with clustered hosting at shared prices

You'll benefit from a clustered server in that you pay the same price as you would for shared hosting. This will help your business save money. You can purchase as much computing power as you want because you'll have access to an infinite number of cluster servers. Chances are that a large customer who uses larger applications will never use a fraction of a percent of the total clustered server pool.

I recommend: Check out Concentric Networks’ website, especially if you’re looking for web hosting service. If you’re a database developer and need SQL server cluster service,Concentric Networks offers MySQL and Microsoft cluster server support. You’ll also want to check out FastNext.com. This company gives a complete breakdown of the cluster hosting services it offers, including e-commerce and scripting development. FastNext.com also provides SQL server cluster service, supporting MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Clustered hosting can help with script problems. Poorly written scripts can cripple a server, but clustered hosting isolates script processes, thereby securing and assigning script processes to individual accounts.