Load Balancing Documentation

Load balancing is a critical aspect of maintaining a high-performance and reliable web application. It ensures that incoming network traffic is distributed evenly across multiple servers, optimizing resource utilization and improving response times.

What is Load Balancing?

Load balancing is the process of distributing workloads across multiple computing resources. It can be used to improve the reliability, availability, and performance of applications.

Types of Load Balancing

Layer 4 Load Balancing (TCP/UDP)
- Distributes traffic based on IP and port numbers.
- Suitable for network layer applications.
Layer 7 Load Balancing (HTTP/HTTPS)
- Distributes traffic based on application layer data, such as HTTP headers or cookies.
- Suitable for application layer applications.

Benefits of Load Balancing

Improved Performance: Distributes traffic evenly across servers to reduce response times.
Increased Scalability: Allows you to add more servers as demand increases.
High Availability: Provides redundancy by ensuring that if one server fails, traffic is automatically rerouted to another server.

How to Implement Load Balancing

To implement load balancing, you can use various tools and technologies. Some popular options include:

Nginx: A high-performance web server that also supports load balancing.
HAProxy: A reliable, high-performance application delivery controller.
AWS ELB: A managed load balancer provided by Amazon Web Services.

Example: Nginx Load Balancing Configuration

http {
    upstream myapp {
        server server1.example.com;
        server server2.example.com;
        server server3.example.com;
    }

    server {
        listen 80;

        location / {
            proxy_pass http://myapp;
        }
    }
}