Building Server Farms

The computer industry is like a pendulum. It swings back and forth between two extremes of computing styles. In the old days it was common to see large groups of computers working together on a common task. This was mostly due to a lack of processing power. As processors became more powerful the industry swung in the opposite direction, moving toward single massively powerful computers. Recently the pendulum has returned toward distributed computing. Not unlike a pendulum, each swing covers less and less distance. In the case of the computer industry the pendulum has swung to a point where groups of computers work together to support a specific need. These groups are commonly referred to as Server Farms. Server Farms consist of servers, usually configured identically, a common source of data, and a load-balancing device. The Server Farm is able to scale performance by simply adding more servers to the farm. Some of the larger farms in the industry deal with applications like Computational Chemistry where literally thousands of servers will work together in a farm to perform complex mathematical modeling.