ELB Flashcards
What is ELB?
Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances. This can be done across multiple AZs.
What are the 4 different types of ELB in AWS.
- Application Load Balancer
- Network Load Balancer
- Gateway Load Balancer
- Classic Load Balancer
Describe ALB.
Application Load Balancer:
- Best suited for load balancing of HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
- They operate at Layer 7 and are application-aware.
- Intelligent Load Balancer
Describe NLB.
Network Load Balancer
- Operating at the connection level (Layer4)
Network Load Balancers are capable of handling millions of requests per
second, while maintaining ultra-low latencies.
- Performance Load Balancer
Describe CLB.
- Classic Load Balancers are the legacy load balancers. You can load balance HTTP/HTTPS applications and use Layer 7-specific features, such as X-Forwarded-For and sticky sessions.
- You can also use strict Layer 4 load balancing for applications that rely purely on the TCP protocol.
Classic/Test/Dev Load Balancer.
LB and health checks.
All AWS load balancers can be configured with health checks.
- Health checks periodically send requests to load balancers’ registered instances to test their status.
- The status of the instances that are healthy at the time of the health check is InService.
- The status of any instances that are unhealthy at the time of the health check is OutOfService. The load balancer performs health checks on all
registered instances, whether the instance is in a healthy state or an unhealthy state.
Describe Gateway Load Balancer
Choose a Gateway Load Balancer when you need to deploy and manage a fleet of third-party virtual appliances that support GENEVE. These appliances enable you to improve security, compliance, and policy controls.
What are the listeners in ALB?
- A listener checks for connection requests from clients, using the protocol and port you configure.
- You define rules that determine how the load balancer routes requests to its registered targets.
- Each rule consists of a priority, one or more actions, and one or more conditions.
How does Elastic Load Balancing work?
- Clients make requests to your application.
- The listeners in your load balancer receive requests matching the protocol and port that you configure.
- The receiving listener evaluates the incoming request against the rules you specify, and if applicable, routes the request to the appropriate target group. You can use an HTTPS listener to offload the work of TLS encryption and decryption to your load balancer.
- Healthy targets in one or more target groups receive traffic based on the load balancing algorithm, and the routing rules you specify in the listener.
What are the target groups in ALB?
Each target group routes requests to one or more registered targets, such as EC2 instances, using the protocol and port number you specify.
What are the Limitations of ALB?
- Application Load Balancers only support HTTP and HTTPS.
- To use an HTTPS listener, you must deploy at least one SSL/TLS server certificate on your load balancer. The load balancer uses a server certificate to terminate the frontend connection and then decrypt requests from clients before sending them to the targets.
What are the listeners in NLB?
- A listener checks for connection requests from clients, using the protocol and port you configure.
- The listener on a Network Load Balancer then forwards the request to the target group. There are no rules, unlike with Application Load Balancers.
What is a TLS listener in NLB?
You can use a TLS listener to offload the work of encryption and decryption to your load balancer so your applications can focus on their business logic. If the listener protocol is TLS, you must deploy exactly one SSL server certificate on the listener.
What are some use cases of NLB?
- Network Load Balancers are best suited for load balancing of TCP traffic
where extreme performance is required. - Operating at the connection level (Layer 4, Network Load Balancers are capable of handling millions of requests per second, while maintaining ultra-low latencies.
- Use for extreme performance!
How the X-Forwarded-For request header is used in CLB?
When traffic is sent from a load balancer, the server access logs contain the IP address of the proxy or load balancer only.
To see the original IP address of the client, the X-Forwarded-For request header is used.