Many people use the Internet for research and virtual shopping trips. This places an increasing burden on the web servers that are responsible for providing online shops, information portals and corporate websites. Parallel to the web traffic, the requirements of the users are also increasing. Especially in the service sector, web applications require fast and secure transactions. Therefore, the availability of a website is largely responsible for whether a site visitor who is a potential customer becomes a customer.
What is a load balancer?
As a rule, each domain is assigned a web server that is responsible for processing the requests. For example, a request is simply a call to your website by a user who enters the URL in the address line of his web browser, then the corresponding data is retrieved by the server.
However, if this server fails, for example due to overload, users receive an error message in the form of an HTTP status code. Probably the best known status code is 404: Not found.
Load balancers are used to prevent this problem, for example, by distributing the load over several servers.
How does a load balancer work?
A load balancer makes it possible to distribute the domain to different servers by naming the subordinate web servers with domain suffixes like www1, www2, www3 etc. This naming has the effect that an internet page is available under one address, but behind it several web servers are hidden. This distribution thus actively counteracts server overload, as the requests are distributed to different web servers.
The technical basis for load balancers is the DNS procedure.
What advantages do load balancers offer?
- reduced load times
- automatic load distribution
- prevention of server failures
- enhanced scalability
- updates and configurations possible during operation without noticeable loss of performance
How can you use load balancers in your company?
Load balancers are particularly suitable for websites with irregular traffic. Web shops in particular can benefit massively from a load balancer. If, for example, the number of visitors rises rapidly due to a successful marketing campaign, there could be an overload due to increased requests and you can counteract this overload with a load balancer.
Load balancers are particularly suitable for websites with irregular traffic. Web shops in particular can benefit massively from a load balancer. For example, if the number of visitors increases rapidly due to a successful marketing campaign, there could be an overload due to increased requests and you can counteract this overload with a load balancer.
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