The internet traffic doubles every year, and so as the workload on the server leads to server overloading, which is especially true to popular web servers. Load balances can solve this problem.
The process dividing the computing and workloads properties in cloud computing is defined as cloud load balancing. It allows the enterprise to organize the application or workload demands by allocating resources to different servers, networks, or computers.
This process also holds the transmission of workload demands and traffic over the internet. Load balancers will let you have several servers with a similar configuration and registered to a single load balancer.
It works by receiving traffic from outside sources and allocate them across the registered servers without any negative impact on performance. It also works as a reverse proxy and can increase the traffic and capacity of the application. Load balancing software is the most effective and efficient choice for load balancing.
What is load balancing software?
A load balancing software has two main categories: Load Balancer as a Service or LBaaS and installable load balancer. Installable load balancing software needs installation, configuration, and management.
Using this type of load balancing software requires its users to scale the load balancer and plan for fault tolerance. On the other hand, LBaaSs are managed by cloud providers and have built-in fault tolerance, management, elasticity, and installation.
Load balancing software is further classified based on the routing algorithm as Least Connections First Scheduler, Round-robin scheduler, and Weighted scheduler balancers.
- Least Connections First Balancers: This type of load balancer prioritizes the servers with the least number of connections, hence, its name. You can use this balancer in scenarios where you need to have sticky sessions managed. Sticky sessions are driven in applications that manage the session of every user via the load balancer.
- Round-robin load balancers: This balancer is useful if you have servers with an equal amount of memory and compute. It uses the Round Robin algorithm technique and sends requests to each server in sequence.
- Weighted load balancers: This balancer used if your resources are of different types. For instance, you are using several servers with different memory and computing capacity. Weighted load balancers are ideal for driving more traffic towards the servers with higher memory and computing capacity. Other servers will less capacity will receive less traffic.
What are the benefits of load balancing software?
The demand for load balancing software now is great as this type of load balancer is easy to equip and reliable, programmable, and scalable. The benefits of load balancer include:
- Enabling SSL termination
- Aggregating session load
- Aggregating throughput
- Network and application health checks, and more.
Below is a list of the benefits of load balancers
Programmability
Load balancer software is programmable; hence, its configuration parameters are customizable, unlike its hardware counterpart, and the changes occur quickly. It allows you to set up the health checks and configure them in real-time if needed.
It is useful for applying SSL certificates on balancers for various route requests or changing the whole cluster of target groups. You can also use various CLIs to configure these balancers.
Naturally scalable
Load balancers have real-time scalability. It can handle a huge amount of real-time traffic with increased demand for processing and network. The load balancer software is naturally scalable and can accept hundreds of thousands of simultaneous requests, something that hardware load balancer cannot offer due to the equipment’s physical limitations.
Cost-effective
Cost-effectiveness is one of the main advantages of load balancing software. They are considered more as OPEX compared to their hardware counterparts that are considered as CAPEX. The software-based balancers are easy to install and available at much lesser costs.
Moreover, you can equip as many load balancers as you need through LBaaSs without spending a lot of money. Also, you don’t have to worry about overprovisioning and under-provisioning load balancers.
Secured application
Load balancers are placed between the server and the client, providing an additional security level on applications that are running on servers. Software-based balancers support SSL/TLS communication systems.
The SSL connection can be stopped instantly or at load balancer by utilizing this functionality. This increases the security level and keeps the messages from getting modified while traveling across the channel.
Easy deployment
Another top benefit of load balancing software is that they are easy to deploy when you need it. Whether it is ready-to-use, clickable, or code-based, you can install this type of load balancer on any computer and operating system in no time.
Load balancers play a crucial part in allocating the traffic on healthy instances. These balances allocate the traffic according to various routing algorithms and are classified into software and hardware load balancers. However, opting for the software-based load balancer is always the wise decision, as it offers a lot of benefits compared to hardware.
