Jeevan Henry Dsouza's team blog
Elastic Load Balancing

Elastic Load Balancing

Jeevan Henry Dsouza's photo
Jeevan Henry Dsouza
·

2 min read

Table of contents

Load Balancing

  1. Load Balancing is done when we are routing data from the same type of different server, for example, employee server

  2. When the server types are different then we cannot perform load balancing

Types Of Load Balancer

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is a service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances. ELB enhances the availability and fault tolerance of applications by evenly distributing traffic across healthy instances. There are two types of load balancers within the ELB service:

  1. Application Load Balancer (ALB):

    • Layer 7 Load Balancing: ALB operates at the application layer (Layer 7) of the OSI model, making intelligent routing decisions based on content.

    • Advanced Routing: ALB supports advanced features such as host-based and path-based routing, content-based routing, and WebSocket support.

    • Target Groups: ALB routes traffic to target groups, which can include one or more instances, IP addresses, or Lambda functions.

  2. Network Load Balancer (NLB):

    • Layer 4 Load Balancing: NLB operates at the transport layer (Layer 4) and is designed for handling TCP and UDP traffic.

    • High Performance: NLB is optimized for high performance and low latency, making it suitable for scenarios that require extreme performance and scalability.

    • Static IP Address: NLB provides a static IP address, which can be useful for applications that require clients to connect to a fixed IP.

Key features of Amazon Elastic Load Balancing include:

  • Automatic Scaling: ELB automatically scales its capacity to handle varying levels of traffic, distributing incoming requests to healthy instances.

  • Health Checks: ELB periodically checks the health of instances and directs traffic only to healthy instances, ensuring a high level of availability.

  • Integration with Other AWS Services: ELB seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, such as Auto Scaling, AWS Certificate Manager (ACM), and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).

  • Security: ELB supports secure connections using SSL/TLS, providing encryption for traffic between clients and the load balancer.

  • Logging and Monitoring: ELB provides access logs and integrates with AWS CloudWatch, allowing you to monitor and analyze performance metrics.

  • Cross-Zone Load Balancing: ELB can distribute traffic evenly across instances in multiple Availability Zones, improving fault tolerance and high availability.

  • IPv6 Support: ELB supports IPv6, allowing applications to handle traffic from both IPv4 and IPv6 clients.

ELB