Load balancer

Load balancing is a method of taking multiple requests or processes and distributing them across multiple devices on a network depending on how busy each device is. It aids in preventing a server or network device from getting overwhelmed as it distributes the work more evenly.

Modern high‑traffic websites must serve hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of concurrent requests from users or clients and return the correct text, images, video, or application data, all in a fast and reliable manner. To cost‑effectively scale to meet these high volumes, modern computing best practice generally requires adding more servers.

nformation about a user’s session is often stored locally in the browser. For example, in a shopping cart application the items in a user’s cart might be stored at the browser level until the user is ready to purchase them. Changing which server receives requests from that client in the middle of the shopping session can cause performance issues or outright transaction failure. In such cases, it is essential that all requests from a client are sent to the same server for the duration of the session. This is known as session persistence. The best load balancers can handle session persistence as needed. Another use case for session persistence is when an upstream server stores information requested by a user in its cache to boost performance. Switching servers would cause that information to be fetched for the second time, creating performance inefficiencies.

The majority of Platform as a Service are limited to web applications hosting, reachable via the HTTP protocol. However, in memory, CPU and battery constrained environment, like the IoT world, folks don’t use HTTP. Usually a custom, fast and lightweight TCP based protocol is preferred. A load balancer sits between the client and the server farm accepting incoming network and application traffic and distributing the traffic across multiple backend servers using various methods. By balancing application requests across multiple servers, a load balancer reduces individual server load and prevents any one application server from becoming a single point of failure, thus improving overall application availability and responsiveness.

Load balancers typically come in two flavors: hardware‑based and software‑based. Vendors of hardware‑based solutions load proprietary software onto the machine they provide, which often uses specialized processors. To cope with increasing traffic at your website, you have to buy more or bigger machines from the vendor.