Load balancing as we know it might seem complex, something that is geared more toward the enterprise businesses, but its high level architecture can actually do some good for the small businesses out there, too.
Business applications are necessary to reach customers and to enhance productivity. Managing all of the data and information requires some kind of maintenance, and that’s why there is load balancing. Work gets done more efficiently when resources are not used to their capacity and as a result user response times are generally better. The best reason for load balancing, however, is often times failover. Failover refers to the ability of a system to remain operational while one or more components have failed or gone down.
ItWeb highlighted a story on the South African SMB market and how load balancing is a sound investment despite it seeming like it’s a bit far-reaching. It comes down to business continuity. This should not be something that is pertinent to larger sized businesses. In fact, business continuity is probably more pressing for the SMB market to not only remain competitive, but to stay up and running to keep up with the big guys. As much as 40 percent of small businesses often succumb to natural disasters without a backup plan in place, thus highlighting the importance of investing in load balancing.
This is why out of band management makes sense for all.
Out of band management relies on features like console servers, which can ramp up the development cycle of new products, and in instances where a server has been lost power, or a switch has failed, getting back to business is rather seamless.
Other benefits of out of band management include increased visibility of power usage, being able to regain power and cooling capacity, increased energy efficiency and the added benefit from attendant cost savings.
An out of band management solution provides network professionals with a means to communicate with remote devices when the main network is not available, and a means to monitor conditions and events at remote equipment racks.
Throughout the business world, most large corporations are doing their best to automate processes that used to require more human attention in order to cut costs, save money and improve overall network service. But these don’t have to be exclusive to the enterprise. For SMBs, out of band management just makes sense, for all the reasons it does for larger-scale businesses, perhaps more so.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson