Software-defined load balancers provide several benefits to cloud computing environments, including managing network traffic. However, that is just one of many, and the benefits are more profound than what is commonly known, especially in how it’s used in businesses globally.
Load balancing is a systematic and efficient network distribution or traffic application across numerous servers in a cloud computing environment. It effectively balances the weight of server requests so that traffic doesn’t only fall in one server, but workload is spread among servers, which is the main purpose of a load balancer.
Load balancers execute this traffic management by positioning themselves between backend servers and client devices, receiving incoming server requests in real-time, and distributing them to servers capable of fulfilling the requests.
Here are some of the most beneficial aspects of load balancing in cloud computing environments:
1. Traffic Surges Management
It’s common for cloud-based services to manage massive amounts of workload, which can often lead to overburdening requests in single servers. When this happens, the load balancing software can ensure high service availability and quick response times.
As cloud server load balancers can manage these sudden traffic surges, businesses can resume processes and operations as usual without a worry.
2. Automation
Cloud load balancing has predictive analytic tools that allow companies to identify traffic bottlenecks in advance. This allows companies to gain actionable applications insights instantly, influencing business decisions. All of these are vital for automating processes.
3. Scalability
Cloud infrastructures are built to guarantee scalability. They allow cloud computing environments to immediately scale up whenever a high volume of application or website traffic occurs. However, it also has its fair share of downsides.
This downside happens when a cloud environment automatically scales up and builds up several virtual servers while still running multiple application instances simultaneously. This prevents the newly spun servers from receiving the traffic surge in an organised, coordinated and categorical manner.
Instead, a few virtual servers will end up having almost no traffic, while others can be overburdened with requests. But with the help of load balancers, that traffic upsurge will be evenly distributed among all servers and application instances. This effectively becomes the central network component of the cloud.
4. Emergency Features
Cloud-based service providers are capable of pointing unavailable servers and redirect traffic requests to operational servers. Cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure can span network traffic across different geographical regions.
During emergencies, when a particular geographical area is affected by natural disasters, causing cloud servers to be inoperable, load balancers can redirect traffic to other geographical locations.
Moreover, when cloud load balancers support certain load balancing algorithms, it can determine whether a group of servers is likely to be overburdened more rapidly than usual. In this case, load balancers will instantly redirect server traffic to more equipped nodes to manage such requests.
Investing in a load balancer allows you to effectively maintain your service level at high-traffic stages and smoothing out your processes. You have the opportunity to manage the same level of responsiveness and availability while ensuring that no requests are left dissatisfied.
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