Load Balancer vs Reverse Proxy — What's the Difference? #python #coder #softwaredeveloper

Key Use Cases for Load Balancers

The diagram below shows top 6 use cases where we use a load balancer.

🔹 Traffic Distribution
Load balancers evenly distribute incoming traffic among multiple servers, preventing any single server from becoming overwhelmed. This helps maintain optimal performance, scalability, and reliability of applications or websites.

🔹 High Availability
Load balancers enhance system availability by rerouting traffic away from failed or unhealthy servers to healthy ones. This ensures uninterrupted service even if certain servers experience issues.

🔹 SSL Termination
Load balancers can offload SSL/TLS encryption and decryption tasks from backend servers, reducing their workload and improving overall performance.

🔹 Session Persistence
For applications that require maintaining a user's session on a specific server, load balancers can ensure that subsequent requests from a user are sent to the same server.

🔹 Scalability
Load balancers facilitate horizontal scaling by effectively managing increased traffic. Additional servers can be easily added to the pool, and the load balancer will distribute traffic across all servers.

🔹 Health Monitoring
Load balancers continuously monitor the health and performance of servers, removing failed or unhealthy servers from the pool to maintain optimal performance.