Load Balancing

Question 1

What is a Load Balancer?

Answer 1

Load Balancer helps to spread the traffic across a cluster of servers to improve responsiveness and availability of applications, websites or databases.

Question 2

Additional Functionality of LB

Answer 2

LB also keeps track of the status of all the resources while distributing requests. If a server is not available to take new requests or is not responding or has elevated error rate, LB will stop sending traffic to such a server.

Question 3

Where LB resides?

Answer 3

• Between the user and the web server
• Between web servers and an internal platform layer, like application servers or cache servers
• Between internal platform layer and database

Question 4

Benefits of Load Balancing

Answer 4

• Users experience faster, uninterrupted service.
• Service providers experience less downtime and higher throughput.
• Load balancing makes it easier for system administrators to handle incoming requests while decreasing wait time for users.
• Smart load balancers provide benefits like predictive analytics that determine traffic bottlenecks before they happen.
• System administrators experience fewer failed or stressed components.

Question 5

What are the different LB algorithms?

Answer 5

• Least Connection Method
• Least Response Time Method
• Least Bandwidth Method
• Round Robin Method
• Weighted Round Robin Method
• IP Hash

Question 6

What are different ways to implement LB

Answer 6

1. Smart Client
2. Hardware Load Balancer (Ex: Citrix NetScaler)
3. Software Load Balancer (Ex: HAProxy)