Load balancing distributes IP traffic across multiple servers to improve performance, utilization, and prevent server overload. It’s important for busy networks and typically involves two or more web servers. Load balancing allows service to continue during server downtime and can use various methods to balance loads.
Load balancing is the process by which incoming Internet Protocol (IP) traffic can be distributed across multiple servers. This improves the performance of the servers, leads to their optimal utilization and ensures that no single server is overwhelmed. The practice is especially important for busy networks, where it’s difficult to predict the number of requests that will be sent to a server.
Typically, two or more web servers are employed in a load balancing scheme. In the event that one of the servers becomes overloaded, requests are forwarded to another server. This process reduces service time by allowing more servers to handle requests. Service time is reduced by using a load balancer to identify which server has the appropriate availability to receive traffic.
The process, very generally, is simple. A web page request is sent to the load balancer, which forwards the request to one of the servers. That server replies to the balancer, which in turn sends the request to the end user.
Load balancing allows the service to continue even in the face of server downtime due to server failure or maintenance. If a company uses multiple servers and one of them fails, its website or other services will still be available to its users, as traffic will be diverted to the other servers in the server farm. In Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) the load is distributed to geographically scattered server farms, depending on their load, health or proximity.
There are several methods by which loads can be balanced. If the servers are similar in hardware specifications, the Perceptive methods (which predicts the server based on historical and current data) and Fastest Response Time may be the best to use. However, if the hardware specifications are different, the Weighted Round Robin method, which assigns requests to servers in turn based on their weights, may be a better solution because it can assign more requests to the server that can handle the greater volume.
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