Server Load Balancing

Load balancing is a technique used to distribute incoming network traffic across a group of servers or resources to optimize resource utilization, improve performance, and increase reliability.

There are many different types of load balancers, including hardware load balancers, software load balancers, and cloud-based load balancers. Load balancers can be used in a variety of contexts, including web servers, application servers, and databases.

Load balancers work by distributing incoming traffic across a group of servers or resources using a variety of algorithms and policies. The goal is to evenly distribute the load and ensure that no single server or resource is overwhelmed.

Load balancers can be configured to use various algorithms to determine how to distribute the load. Some common algorithms include:

• Round-robin: In this algorithm, the load balancer sends incoming requests to each server in turn, starting with the first server and then moving on to the next.
• Least connections: In this algorithm, the load balancer sends incoming requests to the server with the fewest active connections.
• Least response time: In this algorithm, the load balancer sends incoming requests to the server with the lowest response time.

Load balancers can also be configured to use various policies to determine which servers or resources are eligible to receive incoming requests. Some common policies include:

• Health check policies: These policies determine which servers or resources are healthy and available to receive traffic. The load balancer can be configured to monitor the status of servers or resources and only send traffic to healthy ones.
• Affinity policies: These policies determine how long a client’s traffic should be directed to the same server or resource. For example, a load balancer might use an affinity policy to ensure that all requests from a particular client are sent to the same server for a certain period of time.

Overall, load balancing is an important technique that helps organizations optimize resource utilization, improve performance, and increase reliability by distributing incoming traffic across a group of servers or resources.