What is a Load Balancer?

A load balancer acts as a traffic director, routing incoming requests (users) to different servers based on various factors, primarily the current load on each server.

Why are Load Balancers Necessary?

1. Improved Security: It helps prevent exposure of servers' private IP addresses to internet users by using private IPs for internal communication between servers and the load balancer, while exposing only the public IP to users for communication with the load balancer.

2. Enhanced Availability: If one of the servers goes offline, the load balancer routes all traffic to another server in the pool, ensuring high availability.

3. Simplified Scaling: Scaling becomes an easy process as we only need to add more servers to the web server pool, and the load balancer automatically starts to send requests to them.

4. Optimized Performance: By distributing requests across multiple servers, load balancers prevent any single server from becoming a bottleneck, improving overall system responsiveness.