Cloud Load Balancer
A cloud load balancer is a managed service that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple backend servers or resources in a cloud environment to ensure high availability, reliability, and scalability. It acts as a single point of contact for clients, intelligently routing requests based on factors like server health, geographic location, or configured rules. This helps optimize resource utilization, prevent server overload, and provide fault tolerance for applications.
Developers should use cloud load balancers when building scalable web applications, APIs, or microservices that require high availability and can handle variable traffic loads. They are essential for distributing traffic across multiple instances in auto-scaling groups, enabling zero-downtime deployments through health checks and traffic shifting, and improving performance with features like SSL termination and content-based routing. Common use cases include e-commerce sites, SaaS platforms, and globally distributed services.