subject: Load Balancers And Its Utilities [print this page] To explain in simple terms, load balancing is a computer methodology to disseminate workload across numerous serves, computer cluster, disk drives, central processing units, network links or any other resources. This helps to attain optimal resource utilization, reduce response time, increase throughput and avert overload.
How does load balancing apply to web security?
Load balancing offers few essential benefits. Some of them are as follows:-
Minimizes the load on individual systems and reduces response time
Maximizes network utilization
Enhances reliability
Facilitates scaling
Improves user satisfaction
Pertaining to web security products, load balancing can also be defined as the practice of intelligently routing incoming or outgoing HTTP traffic to any one of the several servers accountable for controlling admission to websites. It is also responsible for scanning traffic for spyware, malware, phishing scams and other unnecessary components.
Problems solved through Load Balancing
Generally, there are numerous common problems that innovative load balancers solve. These are:-
Facilitating the addition of more seats (horizontal scalability)
Balancing the load of one or more local servers (Server Load Balancing or SLB)
Balancing load across globally-distributed servers (Global Server Load Balancing or GSLB)
Balancing across multiple security devices (Firewall Load Balancing)
Fault tolerance
High availability
What the industry has to offer
Today eminent companies have come up with both link load and load balancing solutions. Innovative load balancers offer the following features to customers:-
Results in local and global server load balancing along with multi-unit clustering for 99.999% application uptime and data center scalability
Results in high-end application-fluent traffic management for optimized delivery of business critical applications and IP services
Leads to application and Web offloading servers for maximized efficiency, capacity and return on investment
Offers integrated TCP connection multiplexing, high-speed HTTP processing, compression and caching for a 5X improvement in application performance
There is SSL acceleration for safeguarding data in transit, off loading compute-intensive processes from servers and enhancing application performance
Enables to reverse-proxy architecture with a packet-inspection firewall for securing applications without impacting performance
There are Application-specific certifications and configuration directions for fast execution of optimized configurations
Extensible XML-RPC for integration with proprietary and 3rd party data center management and monitoring products
Familiar CLI and intuitive WebUI for ease of configuration and management
Today leading service providers of application delivery networking have introduced innovative load balancing appliances. These appliances leverage parallel multi-core processing to cost-efficiently drive industry-leading function over a rich load balancing and application acceleration feature set for unparallel ownership value. These devices are available on application delivery controller hardware and are engineered for cloud, modem data center and other virtual platforms. Furthermore, it enables to enhance application function and paces up the ROI from small as well as large scale enterprises.
