Scalability and High Availability Technique In AWS
What is Load Balancing
Load balancing is a technique used to evenly distribute network traffic among multiple servers or resources. The goal is to avoid overloading any single server, preventing it from becoming a performance bottleneck. This approach significantly improves the overall performance, availability, and reliability of applications.
In this article, we will discuss the AWS load load-balancing and scalibility technique.
AWS provides a range of load balancing services that automate the distribution of network traffic, making it easier to scale your applications seamlessly.
Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)
Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) as a service to distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses, within one or more availability zones.
There are three types of Elastic Load Balancers in AWS
- Application Load Balancer (ALB): Balances traffic at the application level, ideal for HTTP/HTTPS-based applications.
- Network Load Balancer (NLB): Offers low-latency transport-layer balancing, suitable for TCP/UDP traffic.
- Classic Load Balancer (CLB): Provides basic HTTP/HTTPS load balancing.
Route 53 DNS-Based Load Balancing:
Uses DNS-based routing to direct traffic to AWS resources, supporting latency-based and geolocation-based routing.
- Category: DNS-Based Traffic Management
- Key Concepts: Route 53 DNS-Based Load Balancing leverages DNS to distribute traffic based on factors like latency and geolocation. It provides flexibility in routing strategies, ensuring efficient resource utilization for different regions and user locations.
Global Accelerator:
Routes traffic globally based on predefined policies, optimizing performance and reliability.
- Category: Global Traffic Management
- Key Concepts: AWS Global Accelerator utilizes Anycast IP addresses to efficiently route global traffic over the AWS global network. It optimizes performance by directing users to the nearest healthy endpoint, improving reliability across regions.
Auto Scaling with Load Balancers:
Automatically adjusts the number of instances using load balancers to meet application demand, ensuring scalability and cost-efficiency.
- Category: Scalability and Cost Optimization
- Key Concepts: Auto Scaling dynamically manages the number of instances in response to varying workloads. Integration with load balancers ensures that traffic is evenly distributed, maintaining responsiveness and optimizing costs.
Application Auto Scaling:
Automatically scales various AWS resources based on defined policies, ensuring optimal resource utilization.
- Category: Resource Scaling and Optimization
- Key Concepts: Application Auto Scaling extends beyond instances to automatically adjust resources such as Amazon ECS services and DynamoDB tables. It optimizes resource usage, ensuring efficient scalability in diverse AWS environments.
Cross-Region Load Balancing:
Supports disaster recovery and high availability by deploying load balancers across different AWS regions.
- Category: Disaster Recovery and High Availability
- Key Concepts: Cross-Region Load Balancing strategically places load balancers in multiple AWS regions. In the event of a region failure, traffic is seamlessly redirected to resources in a healthy region, ensuring continuous service availability.
Container and Lambda Load Balancing:
Balances traffic for containerized applications and Lambda functions.
- Category: Microservices Traffic Management
- Key Concepts: Load balancing for containers and Lambda functions ensures efficient distribution of traffic in microservices architectures. It supports dynamic workloads and contributes to optimal performance.
WAF Integration:
Combines Web Application Firewall (WAF) with ALB for enhanced security.
- Category: Security Integration
- Key Concepts: WAF integration with Application Load Balancer (ALB) adds an additional layer of security, protecting applications from web-based attacks. It allows for fine-grained control over web traffic and security policies.
TLS/SSL Termination:
Offloads SSL decryption from backend instances to improve efficiency.
- Category: Security and Performance Optimization
- Key Concepts: TLS/SSL termination at the load balancer level enhances efficiency by handling decryption centrally. This reduces the computational load on backend instances, improving overall performance.
Connection Draining and Stickiness:
Manages connection termination and session stickiness for a smoother user experience.
- Category: User Experience Optimization
- Key Concepts: Connection draining ensures gradual termination of connections to instances, preventing abrupt disruptions. Session stickiness maintains user sessions with the same backend instance, contributing to a seamless and consistent user experience.
Health Checks and Monitoring:
Monitors the health and performance of backend instances, automatically replacing unhealthy ones.
- Category: Performance Monitoring and Fault Tolerance
- Key Concepts: Continuous health checks and monitoring ensure the reliability of backend instances. Unhealthy instances are automatically identified and replaced, maintaining high availability and performance.
Video Tutorial
For a visual understanding of these load balancing techniques, you can watch the following video tutorial:
Additional Resources
For more in-depth information and examples, you can refer to the following article: