Load balancing mechanism in on-premises and cloud infrastructures: a case study

To support thousands of concurrent users in accessing data and web infrastructures, most organisations use on-premises and multiple cloud storage facilities. This does not only ensure flexibility, security, service availability and reduction in the peak demand for accessibility but also improves the overall efficient performance of the organisations network. However, for most of these organisations, balancing and efficient distribution of load across these different locations can be a serious challenge. Load balancing is fundamental and critical to the performance of an organisations especially those with multiple storage centres.
This paper empirically investigates the mechanism and procedure used in load balancing by Higher Education Institutions (HEI) with multiple storage locations. Primary data were collected from selected Universities across Scotland and analysis was carried out using SPSS to determine the efficient loading mechanism. The paper also investigates the challenges of load balancing between these multiple storage locations and seeks to proffer solutions that would achieve effective load balancing in HEI data centres.