Load Balancing in the Cloud

Chapter 2. Load Balancing in the Cloud

Cloud load balancing refers to distributing load across a number of application servers or containers running on cloud infrastructure. Cloud providers offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which renders virtual machines and network provisioning through use of an application programming interface (API). In the cloud it’s easy and natural to scale horizontally as new application servers are just an API call away. With dynamic environments, where new machines are provisioned and decommissioned to meet user demand, there is a greater need for a load balancer to intelligently distribute traffic across your machines.

Load Balancing Offerings in the Cloud

In the cloud you’re able to run any load balancer you’d like. Some load balancers, however, have a higher return on investment in regards to the solutions they provide versus the amount of time to integrate and manage. A great thing about the cloud is you can quickly proof of concept different architectures and solutions with little up-front investment. Let’s take a look at the different types of load balancer offering in the cloud.

Native Cloud Load Balancers

Cloud-provided load balancers such as Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), Application Load Balancer (ALB), and Network Load Balancer (NLB) are built specifically for their environment. They require little up-front setup investment and little to no maintenance. Cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Compute, and Amazon ...