Elastic Path supports load balanced server clusters for the storefront and the search server.

A server cluster is a group of computers acting as one server. A common use of clusters is to increase server performance and server availability. In a load balanced cluster, one server distributes work to the cluster nodes.

Common load balanced cluster components:

• Load balancer – The server that handles all website traffic and distributes work to the cluster nodes.
• Cluster nodes – The servers in the cluster that contain an instance of a website application (for example, a storefront) and perform the work.
• File synchronization server – The server that synchronizes changes to common files across all the servers in the cluster.

Elastic Path can run on a load balanced cluster. A typical configuration includes:

• Load balancer – An Apache server configured with a load balancing module.
• Cluster nodes – Multiple application servers in a cluster, each with the Elastic Path storefront deployed on it.
• Commerce Manager server – An application server with an Elastic Path Commerce Manager deployment.
• Search server – An application server with the Elastic Path Search Server deployed on it.
• File synchronization server – An rsync server on the Commerce Manager server and an rsync client on each cluster node.