Hardware Load Balancers
As the name suggests we use a physical appliance to distribute the traffic across the cluster of network servers. These load balancers are also known as Layer 4-7 Routers and these are capable of handling all kinds of HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and UDP traffic.
Hardware load balancers are dedicated devices designed for the sole purpose of managing network traffic. They often come as standalone appliances or modules within networking hardware.
- HLBs can handle a large volume of traffic but it comes with a hefty price tag and it also has limited flexibility.
- If any of the servers don’t produce the desired response, it immediately stops sending the traffic to the servers.
- These load balancers are expensive to acquire and configure, which is the reason a lot of service providers use them only as the first entry point for user requests.
- Later the internal software load balancers are used to redirect the data behind the infrastructure wall.
Types of Load Balancer
Load Balancers distribute incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure optimal resource utilization, minimize response time, and prevent server overload. When it comes to load balancing, three primary types exist: software load balancers, hardware load balancers, and virtual load balancers.
Contact Us