How does server load balancing work




















No matter the case, the purpose of the algorithm is to send the client connection to the best suited application server. The most commonly recommended algorithm is least connection.

This algorithm is designed to send the connection to the best performing server based on the number of connections it is currently managing.

Least connections takes into account the length of each connection by only looking at what is currently active on the server. The Kemp LoadMaster load balancer is designed to optimize the load balancing experience. LoadMaster is a software-based solution that is also available as a hardware appliance.

Kemp focuses on the core load balancing technologies to ensure a simplified configuration and management process. This focus translates to a significant TCO savings for the life of the technology.

Kemp offers world class support through an extensive organization of experts to offer assistance to customers 24x7. Kemp has built a team of load balancing and networking experts over many years to become a premier technology organization with over , deployments in countries.

Kemp LoadMaster is the leading load balancer available on the market today. Affordable load balancers available as both virtual load balancers and hardware load balancers. Skip to main content. What is a Load Balancer A load balancer can be deployed as software or hardware to a device that distributes connections from clients between a set of servers.

Expert Series What is Load Balancing? Please check your inbox for your exclusive Webinar link. Have a specific question about load balancing? Jump through the article through the links below; What is load balancing? What a load balancer supports? Whereas round robin does not account for the current load on a server only its place in the rotation , the least connection method does make this evaluation and, as a result, it usually delivers superior performance.

Virtual servers following the least connection method will seek to send requests to the server with the least number of active connections. More sophisticated than the least connection method, the least response time method relies on the time taken by a server to respond to a health monitoring request. The speed of the response is an indicator of how loaded the server is and the overall expected user experience.

Some load balancers will take into account the number of active connections on each server as well. A relatively simple algorithm, the least bandwidth method looks for the server currently serving the least amount of traffic as measured in megabits per second Mbps.

Least Packets Method. The least packets method selects the service that has received the fewest packets in a given time period. Methods in this category make decisions based on a hash of various data from the incoming packet. The custom load method enables the load balancer to query the load on individual servers via SNMP.

The administrator can define the server load of interest to query — CPU usage, memory and response time — and then combine them to suit their requests. An ADC with load balancing capabilities helps IT departments ensure scalability and availability of services.

Its advanced traffic management functionality can help a business steer requests more efficiently to the correct resources for each end user. An ADC offers many other functions for example, encryption, authentication and web application firewalling that can provide a single point of control for securing, managing and monitoring the many applications and services across environments and ensuring the best end-user experience.

Solutions Solutions. Digital Workspaces. Unified Endpoint Management. Application Delivery. Secure Access. Content Collaboration. Collaborative Work Management. Boost Productivity Support employee well-being Enable a hybrid workforce Transform employee experience. A load balancer is a device or process in a network that analyzes incoming requests and diverts them to the relevant servers. Load balancers can be physical devices in the network, virtualized instances running on specialized hardware or even a software process.

It could also be incorporated into application delivery controllers ADCs — network devices designed to improve the performance and security of applications in general. OSI is a set of standards for communication functions for a system that does not depend on the underlying internal structure or technology. According to this model, load balancing should occur at two layers for an optimum and consistent user experience.

These load balancers make the decisions on how to route traffic packets based on the TCP or UDP ports that they use and the IP addresses of their source and destination. L4 load balancers do not inspect the actual contents of the packet but map the IP address to the right servers in a process called Network Address Translation. L7 load balancers act at the application layer and are capable of inspecting HTTP headers, SSL session IDs and other data to decide which servers to route the incoming requests to and how.

Since they require additional context in understanding and processing client requests to servers, L7 load balancers are computationally more CPU-intensive than L4 load balancers, but more efficient as a result. There is another type of load balancing called Global Server Load Balancing.

This extends the capabilities of L4 and L7 load balancers across multiple data centers in order to distribute large volumes of traffic without negatively affecting the service for end users. These are also especially useful for handling application requests from cloud data centres distributed across geographies.

Load balancing came to prominence in the s as hardware appliances distributing traffic across a network. As internet technologies and connectivity improved rapidly, web applications became more complex and their demands exceeded the capabilities of individual servers. There was a need to find better ways to take multiple requests for similar resources and distribute them effectively across servers. This was the genesis of load balancers.

Since load balancing allowed web applications to avoid relying on individual servers, it also helped in scaling these applications easily beyond what a single server could support. The rise of ADCs in the early s was a major milestone in the history of application load balancing. ADCs are network devices that were developed with the goal of improving the performance of applications and application load balancing became one of the ways to achieve that.

But they would soon evolve to cover more application services including compression, caching, authentication, web application firewalls and other security services. As cloud computing slowly began to dominate application delivery, ADCs evolved along as well.

Having started out as hardware appliances, ADCs also took the form of virtual machines with the software extracted from legacy hardware and even pure software load balancers. Software ADCs perform tasks similar to their hardware counterparts but also provide more functionalities and flexibility. They allow organizations to rapidly scale up application services in the cloud environments to meet demand spikes, while maintaining security.

Load balancers could take the form of hardware devices in the network, or they could be purely software-defined processes. No matter which form they come in, they all work by disbursing network traffic to different web servers based on various conditions to prevent overloading any one server.

Think of load balancers like traffic cops redirecting heavy traffic to less crowded lanes to avoid congestion. Load balancers effectively manage the seamless flow of information between application servers and an endpoint device like a PC, laptop or tablet.

The number is used for the balancer to decide which server to take the request. It also has the ability to pick a server entirely by random, or even go round-robin. The hashing algorithm is the most basic form of stateless load balancing.

Since one client can create a log of requests that will be sent to one server, hashing on source IP will generally not provide a good distribution. However, a combination of IP and port can create a hash value as a client creates individual requests using a different source pot. An application load balancer is one of the features of elastic load balancing and allows simpler configuration for developers to route incoming end-user traffic to applications based in the public cloud.

As a result, it enhances user experiences, improves application responsiveness and availability, and provides protection from distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks.

A load balancing router, also known as a failover router, is designed to optimally route internet traffic across two or more broadband connections. Broadband users that are simultaneously accessing internet applications or files will be more likely to have a better experience.

This becomes especially important for businesses that have a lot of employees trying to access the same tools, applications, etc. Complete your digital transformation with our next-gen application delivery platform. Blog Contact Support. Request a Demo. An Introduction to Load Balancing. About Load Balancers. History of Load Balancing. Load Balancing and Security Load Balancing plays an important security role as computing moves evermore to the cloud. Load Balancing Algorithms There is a variety of load balancing methods , which use different algorithms best suited for a particular situation.

Least Connection Method — directs traffic to the server with the fewest active connections. Most useful when there are a large number of persistent connections in the traffic unevenly distributed between the servers. Least Response Time Method — directs traffic to the server with the fewest active connections and the lowest average response time.

Round Robin Method — rotates servers by directing traffic to the first available server and then moves that server to the bottom of the queue. Most useful when servers are of equal specification and there are not many persistent connections. IP Hash — the IP address of the client determines which server receives the request. Load Balancing Benefits. Load balancers have different capabilities, which include: L4 — directs traffic based on data from network and transport layer protocols, such as IP address and TCP port.

L7 — adds content switching to load balancing. Load Balancing with App Insights. Using a Software Load Balancer for Application Monitoring, Security, and End User Intelligence Administrators can have actionable application insights at their fingertips Reduce troubleshooting time from days to mere minutes Avoid finger-pointing and empowers collaborative issue resolution.

Download Now. Software Load Balancers vs. Hardware Load Balancers. Software Pros Flexibility to adjust for changing needs. Ability to scale beyond initial capacity by adding more software instances. Lower cost than purchasing and maintaining physical machines. Software can run on any standard device, which tends to be cheaper.

Allows for load balancing in the cloud, which provides a managed, off-site solution that can draw resources from an elastic network of servers. Cloud computing also allows for the flexibility of hybrid hosted and in-house solutions. The main load balancer could be in-house while the backup is a cloud load balancer. Software Cons When scaling beyond initial capacity, there can be some delay while configuring load balancer software.

Ongoing costs for upgrades. Hardware Pros Fast throughput due to software running on specialized processors. Increased security since only the organization can access the servers physically. Fixed cost once purchased.



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