Load balancer.
also: load balancers · load balancingA component that spreads incoming traffic across many servers, for scale, availability (skip dead servers) and performance.
the two-minute refresher
- Scalability: one server has limits, so distribute the load across many.
- Availability: health checks take a dead server out of rotation while the others keep serving.
- Algorithms include round robin, least connections, weighted and IP/consistent hash.
- It works at Layer 4 (IP and port) or Layer 7 (HTTP: paths, headers, cookies).