Optimizing a \ Content - Aware " Load Balancing Strategyfor Shared Web Hosting

FLEX is a new scalable \locality aware" solution for achieving both load balancing and eecient memory usage on a cluster of machines hosting several web sites 1, 2]. FLEX allocates the sites to diierent machines in the cluster based on their traac characteristics. Here, we propose a set of new methods and algorithms (Simple+, Advanced, and Advanced+) to improve the allocation of the web sites to diierent machines. New methods show additional performance beneets compared to the original Simple strategy. Experiments show that FLEX outperforms traditional load balancing solutions by 50% to 100% (in throughput) even for a four node cluster. Miss ratio is improved 2-3 times.