Load Balancing Techniques

Duration: 5 min

This module delves into the critical techniques and strategies for load balancing in high-throughput serving environments. Understanding load balancing is essential for optimizing resource utilization, ensuring high availability, and maintaining performance under varying loads.

Round Robin Load Balancing

Round Robin is a simple yet effective load balancing algorithm where requests are distributed in a rotational manner across a set of servers. This ensures that each server gets an equal share of the load, which is particularly useful in homogeneous server environments.

import random

# List of servers
servers = ['server1','server2','server3']

# Initialize index
index = 0

def get_server():
    global index
    server = servers[index]
    index = (index + 1) % len(servers)
    return server

# Simulate requests
for _ in range(10):
    print(get_server())

Try it in Google Colab:

server1
server2
server3
server1
server2
server3
server1
server2
server3
server1

Least Connections Load Balancing

Least Connections is a more sophisticated load balancing algorithm that directs traffic to the server with the fewest active connections. This helps in optimizing resource utilization by preventing overloading of any single server.

from collections import defaultdict

# List of servers
servers = ['server1','server2','server3']

# Dictionary to track active connections
connections = defaultdict(int)

def get_server():
    return min(servers, key=lambda server: connections[server])

def increment_connection(server):
    connections[server] += 1

def decrement_connection(server):
    connections[server] -= 1

# Simulate requests
for _ in range(10):
    server = get_server()
    print(f'Request routed to {server}')
    increment_connection(server)

# Simulate completion of requests
for server in servers:
    decrement_connection(server)

💡 Tip: Ensure that the mechanism for tracking active connections is accurate and up-to-date to avoid incorrect load balancing decisions.