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3 Load Balancer Examples To Take You Through 2024

The current year finds us in an IT landscape with unprecedented amounts of data and applications, as will be the case next year and every year to follow. Organizations serving ever-increasing numbers of customers need innovative methods for handling the burden that numerous incoming requests will place on their physical and cloud servers. The answer lies in one or several of the most effective load balancer examples.

Key Takeaways:

Static load balancing, such as the round-robin method, works well when the number of incoming requests is predictable.
Balancing by the least number of connections is a dynamic method that is ideal for spreading the load even when the number of incoming client streams is unpredictable.
Response time balancing is another example of dynamic load balancing that focuses particularly on providing the fastest service for customers.

Maximize Market Research reports that the global load balancer market size was valued at USD $4.8 billion in 2022 with a projected compound annual growth rate of 13.2% during the forecast period between 2022 and 2029. As this technology grows in terms of both innovation and market investments, it becomes more important for enterprise leaders to fully understand the role of load balancers and the various examples of the technology that can benefit business.

Load balancer examples explained

A load balancer is a technology that distributes network traffic equally across the network’s pool of resources so that individual applications can better support high traffic volumes. The best load balancer examples do this seamlessly and automatically while remaining invisible to the end user.

Organizations need a load-balancing solution to help applications process user requests and the return of data in the form of text, images, or videos. With some applications potentially serving millions of users at a time, the lack of proper load balancing can result in poor performance, poor response times, or outright failures of service.

Data and applications are multiplying exponentially in the modern IT space, as are the demands of users. Load balancing will continually become more important than ever in 2024 and beyond, meaning that various types of load balancing will also rise in importance, including:

Application load balancing
Network load balancing
Global server load balancing
DNS load balancing

Becoming familiar with the best load balancer examples on the market today will help enterprise leaders make the best decisions when it comes to preserving the overall health of their IT systems.

Round robin method

Round robin is a static load balancing method, meaning that the underlying algorithm follows fixed rules independent of the actual current server state. This static approach can be more compute-efficient and works well when the incoming load volume is predictable.

The round-robin method itself entails sending client requests to application servers in turn order. As with other static load balancing methods, the round-robin style is suitable for predictable client streams.

Organizations might also consider a weighted round-robin method. When certain servers have higher priority or capacity, it may be wise to give them more weight in the round-robin process to ensure that they receive more traffic compared to other servers in the rotation.

The IP hash method is another static load balancer example, though one that is not as simple or commonly used as the round-robin method. This involves a mathematical hashing computation that converts the client IP address to a more easily mappable number that is then assigned to an application server.

Least connection method

The “least connection” approach is a dynamic load-balancing method, meaning that the underlying algorithm examines the state of available servers before assigning traffic. This can be a more compute-intensive method, but it is much more versatile compared to static algorithms.

Load balancing by least connection implies that the system checks which application servers are currently maintaining the least number of connections and sends client requests to those locations. This is suitable for situations in which incoming requests might have widely varying connection times.

Through a weighted least connection method, it is possible to define that certain servers are capable of handling a greater number of connections in the algorithm. This ensures that the load balancer will assign requests based on which servers have the least amount of connections compared to their overall capacity.

Response time method

Balancing by least response time is another dynamic load balancer example. In this method, the algorithm checks average server response times as well as the number of connections on each server when determining where to send incoming requests.

Response time refers to the total amount of time it takes for a server to process an incoming request and send a response. A least response time approach to load-balancing, therefore, facilitates the fastest possible level of service and is suitable in situations where response time is the most important metric.

The resource-based method is yet another example of dynamic load-balancing, albeit one that is not as user-focused as the response time method. When using a resource-based load balancer example, the algorithm will calculate each server’s overall usage of resources such as computing and memory before directing traffic to the location with the most available resources.

Load balancer examples on Nutanix AHV

The sheer number and variety of workloads running in the modern enterprise cloud call for both static and dynamic load-balancing solutions. Organizations need a cloud platform that can guarantee both freedom and simplicity when it comes to load-balancing virtualized workloads.

Nutanix AHV is a virtualization platform that not only powers applications and streamlines administration but also accommodates the implementation and scaling of various load balancer instances. With Nutanix AHV, IT teams can leverage a full suite of advanced enterprise capabilities to lower operational costs through load balancing that improves application availability, security, and performance.

The overloading of application servers is a complex problem for IT teams to tackle, and there are many load balancer examples to consider when searching for a solution. The best options are those that hide the complexity under a layer of intuitive simplicity on a comprehensive cloud platform.

Learn more about the role load balancing can play in simplifying data management as well as application optimization in the cloud.

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