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 algorithms like round-robin or least connections, and often includes features such as health checks, SSL termination, and autoscaling integration. This helps optimize resource utilization, prevent server overload, and provide fault tolerance for applications deployed in the cloud.
Developers should use cloud load balancers when building scalable web applications, APIs, or microservices that require high availability and can handle variable traffic loads, such as e-commerce sites, streaming platforms, or enterprise SaaS products. They are essential for distributing traffic across multiple instances in cloud environments like AWS, Azure, or GCP, ensuring no single server becomes a bottleneck and enabling seamless handling of spikes in user demand without downtime.