What is a Linux Virtual Server?
Linux virtual server abbreviated as LVS is software used for load balancing for the operating systems which are Linux kernel based. LVS project was a free and open source program which was developed in the year 1998 by Wensong Zhang which was subjected to the requirements by General Public License (GPL) version 2. The basic mission of this project was to create a server with high performing and high availability for the Linux operating system using the technology of clustering which gives reliability, scalability and serviceability.
The major work done in this LVS project is to develop advanced level IP load balancing software, application level load balance software and components for cluster management.
Use of LVS
Linux virtual server is used for creating highly scalable network services along with a high availability. The examples of such services are web services, email, VOIP and media services. LVP can also be used to integrate such services with large scale and reliable government and e-commerce applications. One best example of a real world application which has used LVS technology is Wikipedia. Similarly, many real world applications have used the LVS technology and it has found applications throughout the world.
Load balancing using LVS
Linux virtual server provides a basic framework which is used to direct different network connections to multiple servers in order to share the loads of these connections. LVS is actually a network of servers with one or more load balancers which appears to be a single large virtual server for a client outside. This cluster of servers is termed as a virtual server. The LVS is used to build highly scalable and highly available network systems such as Web, FTP, mail VOIP and others.
The different load balancers and the real servers are connected by LAN or geographically dispersed WAN. The load balancers act for dispersing the requests to different servers. The parallel services of this cluster appear as a single virtual IP address (VIP). The dispatching of requests uses IP load balancing techniques or load balancing technologies at the application level. By adding or removing the nodes in the cluster, scalability of the system can be achieved. In order to achieve high availability, the node or daemon failures are detected and reconfigured.
Linux virtual server VS dedicated server hosting
The users of best dedicated server hosting need to pay more money in order to obtain the performance and capacity they can get from a LVS and this can be a big difference in terms of cost effectiveness.
When you look for companies which rent a server, you look for high availability option along with high performance and LVS technology can provide both to you at cheaper cost.
For the full list of servers and plans visit the best website for dedicated servers here