A novel web server farm architecture is provided that combines various cloud components and innovatively maximizes their strengths to achieve a scalable, adaptable, load balanced computing architecture. In one embodiment, this architecture includes a storage host for static content hosting, a cluster of virtual machines (operating as web servers) for dynamic content hosting, and a dedicated application engine for monitoring the load of the virtual machines. A browser or end-application user of a web application is first routed to a static anchor page hosted on the storage host. The browser is subsequently presented with a list of virtual machines and data corresponding to their respective current loads. To access dynamic content, the browser is able to select from the virtual machines based in large part on the reported current loads of the virtual machines. Once a virtual machine is selected, the browser may communicate directly with the selected web server.