Load balancing is a technique that aims to distribute the workload evenly among multiple resources such as servers, processors or network connections. The main goal is to use the available resources efficiently and optimally to improve the performance, scalability, reliability and availability of systems.
Using this technology, individual resources are relieved by distributing requests or data processing tasks across multiple resources instead of concentrating everything on a single node or server. This ensures better utilization of existing capacities and prevents bottlenecks, overloads or failures of individual components.
There are several load balancing methods available, including Round Robin, Least Connections, Weighted Round Robin, Weighted Least Connections, Hash-Based Load Balancing and others. Deciding on the appropriate load balancing method depends on the specific requirements, type of application, and infrastructure.
Load balancing is widely used in many areas of information technology, including web servers, content delivery networks (CDNs), databases, and network load balancing.
Load balancing offers a variety of benefits to enterprises, particularly in terms of the performance, scalability and resilience of your IT infrastructure.
Distributing requests evenly across multiple servers reduces the load on each server, resulting in improved performance and response time. This allows the business to process more requests and provide a better user experience.
Another major benefit is scalability. As demand for the company’s services increases, additional servers can be added to handle the increased load. This gives the company the flexibility to respond to growth and peak loads without bottlenecks or performance degradation.
In addition, load balancing increases the resilience of the infrastructure. If a server fails or is unresponsive, requests are automatically redirected to other available servers so that services remain available. This reduces downtime and improves service reliability.
Last but not least, the technology also helps improve security. By distributing the load across multiple servers, potential overload or DDoS attacks can be theoretically better defended against.
However, only in theory because we have found that load balancing tools are not effective in protecting individual websites, APIs or applications in the cloud against Layer 7 attacks. In practice, a security risk can certainly arise here and should be additionally checked by security experts.
In addition, load balancing enables the monitoring of traffic for possible anomalies and identifying suspicious activity.
Load balancing includes various methods to evenly distribute traffic across multiple servers in a network or server farm. The most popular methods are:
Round Robin:
In this method, requests are received in the order they arrive and then distributed evenly among the available servers. Each server receives a request in turn until the entire list of servers is gone through, and the cycle starts over.
Least Connections:
Here, the request is routed to the server with the lowest current load. This ensures that heavily loaded servers are relieved, and requests are distributed more evenly among the servers.
IP hash:
This method uses the client’s IP address to select a specific server. This ensures that a client is always routed to the same server for each request, which is especially important when session data is stored on a particular server.
Least Response Time:
Here, the request is routed to the server with the shortest response time. This ensures that requests are routed to the fastest server and optimal performance is achieved.
Weighted Round Robin:
This method works similarly to Round Robin, but each server is assigned a weight reflecting its capacity or performance. Servers with higher weights receive more requests than servers with lower weights.
Least Bandwidth:
In this method, the request is forwarded to the server that uses the least bandwidth. This is especially useful when server bandwidth plays an important role in performance.
Each method has advantages and disadvantages and is suitable for different application scenarios. Choosing the right load balancing method depends on the specific requirements and infrastructure of the network or server farm.
Load balancing plays a crucial role in improving the user experience on your website, as it efficiently distributes traffic among different servers. Thus, overloads are avoided, and website response times are improved, resulting in faster loading and smooth usage.
Even load distribution ensures that the website is stable and reliable even during heavy traffic, minimizing outages and interruptions. All these phenomena positively impact user satisfaction and their overall experience on your website.
By the way, a Content Delivery Network can also help you transfer important data from A to B quickly, efficiently, and securely.
