What Is Load Balancing?
Introduction
Amazon Web Services has become a staple for businesses of all sizes, offering a wide range of cloud-based services that allow you to focus on your company’s core competencies—and leave the rest up to Amazon. The Cloud computing market share of AWS is 41.5%, greater than all of its rivals combined, according to a CSA (Cloud Security Alliance) report.
But even if you are using Amazon Web Services, you can’t afford to forget about security. After all, one of the most important things you need to do when running your business well is to protect yourself from hackers and other threats.
With AWS load balancing and network security, you can rest easy knowing that your servers are safe and getting even safer every day as Amazon continues to innovate in this area.
What Is Load Balancing?
Load balancing is a process of distributing traffic across multiple servers. This is done using various methods, including DNS, hardware-based, and software-based load balancers in AWS.
Load balancing can ensure that the same amount of resources are available on each server so that performance is consistent. It also helps to ensure that one server isn’t overloaded while another remains underutilized. In addition to making sure your servers are all functioning at their best, load balancing also ensures that users are directed to the most appropriate server at any given time.
Let’s look at an example scenario to understand how load balancing works and why it’s important.
You’re running a website with two web servers—one in New York City and one in San Francisco—and you want to ensure that users from both areas receive equal performance when accessing your site. To do this, you need to have some sort of mechanism for redirecting users based on location.
One way would be to use DNS (Domain Name System) records so that all requests from San Francisco go directly to the San Francisco server and all requests from New York go directly to the New York server. This would work, but it’s not very efficient. You have to make sure that your DNS records are updated every time you add a server or remove one from the pool. Plus, if one of those servers went down, users would be redirected to an error page rather than simply receiving a message saying that they couldn’t connect—which could be confusing for end users. A better way to handle this is to use a load balancer.
A network load balancer in AWS is software that sits between the user and your servers, checking each request coming in to see which server it should send that request to. If one server goes down, the load balancer can automatically redirect requests for that server to another one in the pool (using DNS records). The load balancer is also used to balance the load across all your servers.
What Are Load Balancing Algorithms?
The load balancing algorithm is the algorithm that determines how a data center should be divided into subgroups in order to balance the load between them. A load-balancing algorithm‘s main goal is to ensure that all clients are equally satisfied with the speed and quality of their service.
There are two main types of load-balancing algorithms:
Static load balancing: This type of load balancing is the simplest and most common. It does not require any additional resources in order to work; it simply relies on the data center’s capacity and configuration. The algorithm divides a single group into several subgroups, which are then distributed across all available servers in order to balance their loads.
Following are some static load balancing methods:
Round-robin Method: The round-robin method is the simplest of all load-balancing algorithms. It’s also called random distribution, as it distributes requests randomly across all servers in the pool. This method doesn’t take into account how busy each server is, so it can lead to suboptimal performance when one or more servers are overloaded with requests.
IP Hash Method: The IP hash method is similar to the round-robin method, but it also considers each request’s source IP address. This is important for applications that need to distribute requests evenly across multiple data centers located in different parts of the world.
Weighted Round-robin Method: The weighted round-robin method is similar to the round-robin method, but it distributes requests according to weights that you assign to each server in the pool. This allows you to ensure that some servers receive more traffic than others.
Dynamic load balancing: This type of load balancing is more complex than static load balancing and requires the use of additional resources. It works by continuously measuring the performance of all servers in order to determine which ones are most likely to fail at any given time. The algorithm then distributes clients across these servers in such a way as to minimize downtime while maximizing server utilization.
Dynamic Load Balancing Examples:
Least Connection Method: Clients and servers communicate through connections. An active connection is established between the server and the client when the latter sends its first request. Load balancers send traffic to servers with the fewest active connections when using the least connection method. Each server requires the same processing power to handle all connections.
Least Response Time Method: Responding to incoming requests requires the server to spend a certain amount of time processing the request and sending a response. By combining server response time and active connections, the least response time method determines the best server. This algorithm is used to ensure that all users receive faster service.
Weighted Least Connection Method: Some servers are capable of handling more active connections than other servers, so weighted least connection algorithms assume this. The load balancer will direct new client requests to servers with the least connections based on their capacity, which allows you to allocate different capacities to each server.
Resource-based Method: Network load balancers in AWS (NLB AWS) use resource-based methods to distribute traffic based on existing server loads. A server agent calculates how much memory and computational capacity each server uses. Before traffic is distributed to that server, the load balancer checks if there are adequate free resources on the agent.
How Does Load Balancing Work?
There is usually more than one server where companies run their applications. The arrangement of servers in such a way is known as a server farm. Requests from the user to the application are passed through the load balancer as soon as they arrive. Load balancers are then responsible for routing each request to the server that is best equipped to handle the request.
What Are the Types of Load Balancing?
The following are the types of load balancing:
Application Load Balancing: Application load balancing is a method to distribute the load between multiple servers. It is used in the server and network layers of any application.
Global Server Load Balancing: Global server load balancing (GSLB) is a type of load balancing that enables the real-time distribution of traffic across multiple servers based on performance metrics and conditions.
Network Load Balancing: Network load balancing (NLB) is a process whereby load is distributed across multiple servers. The main goal of network load balancing is to ensure that clients always connect to a server that has the lowest possible response time, regardless of server workload.
DNS Load Balancing: DNS load balancing is distributing requests for a given domain across multiple DNS servers. This can be done to increase performance, improve reliability and fault tolerance or reduce latency.
What Are The Benefits of Load Balancing?
Load balancing is a process that distributes the workload to multiple servers to ensure that the load is evenly distributed across all of them.
It has numerous benefits, including the following:
Improved performance and scalability: The AWS network load balancer will spread the workload across multiple servers, which means that each server can handle more traffic than it could on its own. The load balancer also ensures that each server is handled roughly equally, which keeps all of them running at peak efficiency. This can help improve performance and scalability.
Increased redundancy: If one of your servers goes down, the load balancer will automatically distribute traffic to other servers. This can help ensure that your site is always available, even if there’s an outage with a single server.
Improved security: The network load balancer in AWS can monitor and filter traffic, which can help prevent cyber attacks.
Reliable performance: The load balancer can monitor the availability of each server and ensure that traffic is distributed evenly. This will help improve your website’s overall performance because it no longer relies on a single server for all its traffic.
Reduced downtime: A load balancer will automatically restart a server if it goes down. This means that you don’t need to worry about restarting your servers manually when they go offline.
Reduced costs: Load balancers are much less expensive than server farms. You’ll also save money on labor and maintenance because the load balancer is able to monitor your servers and restart them automatically if they fail.
Load balancing can also help reduce the number of servers you need. This means that you won’t have to pay for as many servers, which will save you money in the long run.
Reduced power consumption: Load balancers are able to distribute traffic across multiple servers. This means that you won’t need as many servers running at one time, which will save power.
Reduced latency: Load balancers can help improve performance by distributing traffic across multiple servers. This means that you won’t have a single point of failure, which will lower the latency and increase your website’s speed.
Conclusion
In conclusion, AWS Network Load Balancer is a great tool for managing and monitoring your server traffic. With its many features, you can use it to manage load balancing and traffic routing on your servers. It is easy to set up and configure and works seamlessly with other AWS products.
