Load balancing is the art and science of distributing incoming traffic across multiple servers. This not only ensures that no single server is overwhelmed with too much traffic but also guarantees high availability and redundancy. If one server fails, the load is automatically redirected to other servers in the pool. Depending on your needs and budget, load balancing can take place on your web servers, SQL servers, or both. Before making a decision, it is important to analyze traffic and understand where your bottlenecks exist.
Learn more about our seamless migrations. Download our Migration Secrets PDF.
Operates at the transport layer (TCP/UDP) and makes decisions based on source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocol type. Suitable for applications that require simple load distribution.
Operates at the application layer and makes routing decisions based on content type (e.g., video, images, scripts), URL, HTTP header, or other HTTP attributes.
Distributes traffic across multiple servers based on DNS queries. When a user requests a domain, the DNS load balancer returns the IP address of one of the available servers.
Distributes traffic across multiple data centers or cloud regions. It combines DNS load balancing and health checks to determine the best location to serve a user's request.
Operates at the transport layer (TCP/UDP) and makes decisions based on source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocol type. Suitable for applications that require simple load distribution.
Multiple database servers can handle both read and write operations. All servers are treated as "masters". Conflict resolution can be complex if the same data is modified simultaneously on different servers.
Hardware or software load balancers can be used to distribute traffic to multiple database servers. They can be configured for read-write splitting or to distribute traffic based on other criteria.
Solutions like Galera Cluster for MySQL or Always On Availability Groups for SQL Server provide built-in load balancing and high availability. Ensures data consistency across nodes and provides automatic failover.