Load balancing (computing)

Load balancing (computing)

load balancing distributes workloads across multiple computing resources, such as computers, a computer cluster, network links, central processing units or disk drives. Load balancing aims to optimize resource use, maximizethroughput, minimize response time, and avoid overload of any

single resource. Using multiple components with load balancing instead of a single component may increase reliability and availability through redundancy. Load balancing usually involves dedicated software or hardware, such as a multilayer switch or a Domain Name System server process.

Load balancing differs from channel bonding in that load balancing divides traffic between network interfaces on a network socket (OSI model layer 4) basis, while channel bonding implies a division of traffic between physical interfaces at a lower level, either per packet (OSI model Layer 3) or on a data link (OSI model Layer 2) basis with a protocol like shortest path bridging.

One of the most commonly used applications of load balancing is to provide a single Internet service from multiple servers, sometimes known as a server farm. Commonly load-balanced systems include popular web sites, large Internet Relay Chatnetworks, high-bandwidth File Transfer Protocol sites, Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) servers, Domain Name System (DNS) servers, and databases.

Round-robin DNS

An alternate method of load balancing, which does not necessarily require a dedicated software or hardware node, is calledround robin DNS. In this technique, multiple IP addresses are associated with a single domain name; clients are expected to choose which server to connect to. Unlike the use of a dedicated load balancer, this technique exposes to clients the existence of multiple backend servers. The technique has other advantages and disadvantages, depending on the degree of control over the DNS server and the granularity of load balancing desired.

Another more effective technique for load-balancing using DNS is to delegate www.example.org as a sub-domain whose zone is served by each of the same servers that are serving the web site. This technique works particularly well where individual servers are spread geographically on the Internet. For example,

one.example.org A 192.0.2.1

two.example.org A 203.0.113.2

www.example.org NS one.example.org

www.example.org NS two.example.org

However, the zone file for www.example.org on each server is different such that each server resolves its own IP Address as the A-record.[1] On server one the zone file

for www.example.org reports:

@ in a 192.0.2.1

On server two the same zone file contains:

@ in a 203.0.113.2

This way, when a server is down, its DNS will not respond and the web service does not receive any traffic. If the line to one server is congested, the unreliability of DNS ensures less HTTP traffic reaches that server. Furthermore, the quickest DNS response to the resolver is nearly always the one from the network's closest server, ensuring geo-sensitive load-balancing. A short TTL on the A-record helps to ensure traffic is quickly diverted when a server goes down. Consideration must be given the possibility that this technique may cause individual clients to switch between individual servers in mid-session.

Client-Side Random Load Balancing]

One more approach to load balancing is to deliver list of server IPs to the client, and then to have client randomly select the IP from the list on each connection. This essentially relies on all clients causing similar load, and the Law of Large Numbersto achieve reasonably flat load distribution across servers. It has been claimed that client-side random load balancing tends to provide better load distribution then round-robin DNS; this has been attributed to caching issues with round-robin DNS, which in case of large DNS caching servers, tend to skew the distribution for round-robin DNS, while client-side random selection remains unaffected regardless of DNS caching.

With this approach, the method of delivery of list of IPs to the client can vary, and may be implemented as a DNS list (delivered to all the clients without any round-robin), or via hardcoding it to the list. If "smart client" is used, detecting that randomly selected server is down, and connecting randomly again, it also provides fault tolerance.

Server-side Load Balancers

For Internet services, server-side load balancer is usually a software program that is listening on the port where external clients connect to access services. The load balancer forwards requests to one of the "backend" servers, which usually replies to the load balancer. This allows the load balancer to reply to the client without the client ever knowing about the internal separation of functions. It also prevents clients from contacting back-end servers directly, which may have security benefits by hiding the structure of the internal network and preventing attacks on the kernel's network stack or unrelated services running on other ports.

Some load balancers provide a mechanism for doing something special in the event that all backend servers are unavailable. This might include forwarding to a backup load balancer, or displaying a message regarding the outage.

It is also important that the load balancer itself does not become a single point of failure. Usually load balancers are implemented in high-availability pairs which may also replicate session persistence data if required by the specific application.