How the AWS load balancer works

Can you imagine everything that can happen if your application goes down? Lost sales, dissatisfied customers… A real nightmare. The AWS load balancer avoids all of that, making traffic management a dream for any entrepreneur. Understand how it works in today's article!

It 's difficult to accurately anticipate the number of servers your business will need. A marketing campaign with super-results, unexpected industry news or hit spikes can overload your server, causing your applications to go down. At these times, the AWS load balancer is the best solution: it can prevent many accidents.

But what is the AWS load balancer

The load balancer is capable of distributing the load evenly, achieving a fast and satisfactory response for its users. Has traffic to your site suddenly increased? Has one of your servers gone down? The load balancer redirects traffic to the other online servers. Also, when a new server is added to the pool, the AWS load balancer automatically starts sending requests to it.

Why is the load balancer advantageous?

In the article “  Load balancer: see how to develop applications in the cloud “, we explain in detail the benefits of the AWS load balancer for your business. Between them:

• Distribute user requests or network load efficiently across multiple servers;
• Ensure high availability and reliability by sending requests only to online servers;
• Provide the flexibility to add or subtract servers on demand.

How does the AWS load balancer

The AWS load balancer is based on an elastic load balancing service, also known as Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) . Thanks to request routing algorithms, the AWS load balancer is able to automatically distribute your application traffic across multiple destinations, including Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses – as well as horizontally scaling them as needed, whether in one or more Availability Zones.

In addition to scaling resources to meet real-time demands, the AWS load balancer uses system health checks to learn the status of your servers and increase your applications' fault tolerance.

AWS load balancer types

There are three types of AWS load balancer : Load Balancer , Classic Load Balancer (CLB), Application Load Balancer (ALB). Let's understand a little more about them:

Network Load Balancer

It is the best option for load balancing TCP traffic that demands high performance. This type of AWS load balancer operates at the connection level, routing traffic to destinations within the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). Ideal for applications handling millions of requests per second, the load balancer is also optimized to handle bursty and/or volatile traffic.

Classic Load Balancer (CLB)

It's a good choice if your routing and load balancing needs can be handled based on IP addresses and TCP ports. Targeted at applications built within the EC2-Classic network, this AWS load balancer operates at the request and connection levels.

Application Load Balancer (ALB)

Capable of meeting the most complex load balancing needs, managing traffic at the application and individual request level. This type of AWS load balancer is especially advantageous for modern infrastructures such as container-based ones.

It's also very useful if you're building complex web applications where requests from certain components must be directed to one cluster, while others are directed to a different one.

But… How do you know which AWS load balancer best for you?

load balancer that fits in your pocket

Whether it's the Classic Load Balancer (CLB), the Application Load Balancer (ALB) or the Network Load Balancer , the best AWS load balancer is the one that fits your budget without sacrificing performance. With that in mind, we created Sky.Saver , an optimization of the Amazon Web Service (AWS) infrastructure.

Tested on millions of large enterprise instances, Sky.Saver uses artificial intelligence to deliver all the benefits of EC2 at the price of SPOT machines at reduced costs. With Sky.Saver you only pay a percentage of the amount you save — in local currency, reais.

Start saving now ! Talk to one of our experts.