Elastic Load Balancer

intermediate
networking
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Definition

AWS service that distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers to prevent overload. Like a traffic cop directing cars to different lanes to avoid congestion.

Real-World Example

An online shopping site uses Elastic Load Balancer to spread customer requests across multiple servers during peak shopping seasons.

Cloud Provider Equivalencies

All are managed load balancing services that distribute traffic across multiple backends for higher availability and scale. AWS ELB is a family of load balancers: ALB (Layer 7 HTTP/HTTPS), NLB (Layer 4 TCP/UDP/TLS, high performance), and GWLB (service insertion for network appliances). Azure commonly maps to Application Gateway for Layer 7 and Azure Load Balancer for Layer 4. GCP Cloud Load Balancing provides global and regional options across Layer 7 and Layer 4. OCI Load Balancer provides regional Layer 4/7 load balancing.

AWS
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) — Application Load Balancer (ALB), Network Load Balancer (NLB), Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB)
AZ
Azure Load Balancer; Azure Application Gateway
GCP
Cloud Load Balancing (External/Internal HTTP(S), TCP/SSL, UDP)
OCI
OCI Load Balancer

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