Webserver 1
Webserver 1 has the same application as webserver 2, and presents it to the visitor.
Load balancing made easy
Ploi offers an easy way to set up your load balancers. You can install a load balancer with just one click. Adding new servers that have to be load balanced is a breeze with our control panel.
Load balancing is an outstanding technique to distribute your traffic over several servers, allowing you to achieve high availability.
You have full control over the settings of your load balancer. You can even add your own custom configuration in the settings tab to customize even more.
Webserver 2
Webserver 2 has the same application as webserver 1, and presents it to the visitor.
Load Balancer
Load balancer does its magic to determine which webserver the visitor should be sent to.
Your visitor
So, how does it all work?
Let's look at an example. We have two web servers that we want to distribute traffic over. To achieve this, we will need an additional server: the load balancer server.
When your visitor visits the load balancer, the load balancer will execute its algorithm to determine which web server your visitor should be sent to.
You're not limited to just two webservers. You can add as many webservers as you want. The example we illustrated here is a layer 4 type of load balancing.
But what if I have a database?
If you also have a database, you have several options to solve this. The easiest and most convenient way is to create a database server and let your webserver 1 and webserver 2 connect to that.
You could also have the database on either webserver 1 or webserver 2 and let the other webserver connect to that. The main advantage of this is that no other database server is required.
The optimal way is to have the three servers in the same internal network for optimal speed. With Ploi, you can attach any server to your load balancer, making it possible to mix several server providers & locations (which is a good thing!).
Database Server
The database server holds all the data for your applications.
Webserver 1
Webserver 1 has the same application as webserver 2, and presents it to the visitor.
Webserver 2
Webserver 2 has the same application as webserver 1, and presents it to the visitor.
Load Balancer
Load balancer does its magic to determine which webserver the visitor should be sent to.
Your visitor
How about the algorithm?
The load balancer has several options to determine how the request from the visitor should be distributed to the underlying webservers. The commonly used algorithms are round-robin, leastconn, and source.
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roundrobin
It selects the webserver in turns, like ping-pong!
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leastconn
It selects the server with the least active connections; this is recommended for longer sessions.
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source
It selects the webserver based on the hash of the source IP address (i.e., your user's IP address). This makes sure the user stays connected to the same server.
Different supported server types
Webserver
The generic webserver we offer comes with all the defaults installed: webserver, database, Redis, and much more. This is configurable upon installation.
Load balancer
Load balance your traffic over several webservers to distribute traffic. Our special panel makes this a piece of cake for you to configure.
Database Server
A separate database server is more scalable in the future. That's why you can install database-specific optimized servers for your applications.
Redis Server
Need a caching solution for your applications or want to store data to be fetched later temporarily? Set up a scalable Redis server easily and manage settings through our panel.
Worker Server
The worker server is meant for running PHP background tasks, such as queues. Easily scale your application by running multiple workers in different locations without a sweat.
Storage Server
Serve your own storage server, powered by the S3 compatible Minio software. You're able to safely store and host your own files without a sweat.
MeiliSearch Server
Eager to increase and speed up the search results from your website? Create a MeiliSearch server which makes searching documents real easy and quick.
Elasticsearch Server
Search petabytes of data stored on object stores like S3 in minutes. Easily 1-click create an Elasticsearch server with Ploi and be on your way.
Plain Server
A plain server? Yes. This server is a clean server, without webserver for example, but it is easily manageable via Ploi. It is up to you what you want to install on this server.
Docker Server
Docker support in Ploi allows you to run any container on your server without the hassle of setup and maintenance. You can also install it to a default server with 1-click.