Load balancer
Table of contents
Load balancer
A load balancer is a device/software that distributes network traffic or client requests across a number of servers efficiently.
Ensures high availability and reliability by sending requests only to servers that are online.
Provides the ability to scale (add or remove servers depending on demand)
Used as a reverse proxy. Eg: Nginx LB
Algorithms used for load balancing:
- Round-robin
- IP Hash
Least connections etc.
Round robin:
Famous algorithm used for load balancing.
The first request is sent to the first server, then the next to the second, and so on down to the last. Then it is started again, assigning the next request to the first server, and so on. Requests are distributed sequentially.
This algorithm can be weighted such that the most powerful units receive the largest number of requests and receive them first.
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