| This book is meant to be a resource for anyone involved in the design, production, overseeing, or troubleshooting of a site that employs server load balancing (SLB). Managers and other high-level people can use this book to improve their understanding of the overall technology. Engineers and site architects can use this book to give insight into their designs and implementations of SLB. Technicians can use this book to help configure and troubleshoot SLB implementations, as well as other in-the-trenches work.
This book came about because of the almost nonexistent resources for SLB that exist today. Most of the information and resources for an SLB implementation come from the vendor of the particular product that you use or are looking to use. Through my own trials and tribulations, I realized that there was a need for a third-party resource—one that was unbiased and had the users' interests at heart. While most or all of the vendors have good intentions in reference to what they tell you, they can still be clouded by the bottom line of their own sales figures.
Because SLB is relatively new, there is a lack of standardized terminology for concepts associated with the technology. Because of this lack of standardization, this book adopts a particular vocabulary that, though similar, does not match the vocabulary you may have adopted with a particular vendor. This was deliberately done to provide an even, unbiased basis for the discussion of SLB and its terminology. |