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Elastic Load Balancing

·438 words·3 mins

Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes your incoming traffic across multiple targets (EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses) in one or more Availability Zones.

It monitors the health of its registered targets and routes the traffic only to healthy targets.


AWS Elastic Load Balancing Introduction


Benefits of using Load Balancer #

  • Spread load across multiple downstream instances

  • Expose a single point of access (DNS) to the application

  • Seamlessly handle failures of downstream instances

  • Do regular health checks to the instances

  • SSL termination

  • High Availability across Availability Zones

  • ELB is a managed Load Balancer

    • AWS is responsible for upgrades, maintenance and High Availability
    • AWS provides only a few configuration items

3 kinds of Load Balancers offered by AWS #

Application Load BalancerNetwork Load BalancerGateway Load Balancer
HTTP / HTTPS / gRPC protocols (Layer 7)TCP / UDP protocols (Layer 4)Geneve Protocol on IP Packets (Layer 3)
HTTP Routing featuresHigh Performance (millions or requests per second)Route Traffic to Firewalls that you manage on EC2 instances
Static DNS (URL)Static IP through Elastic IPIntrusion Detection

1. Application Load Balancer #

  • HTTP / HTTPS only (Layer 7)

AWS ALB (Application Load Balancer) - Step By Step Tutorial


2. Network Load Balancer #

  • ultra high performance, allows for TCP (Layer 4)

Mastering AWS Network Load Balancer | ALB vs NLB | Step by Step Tutorial


3. Gateway Load Balancer #

  • Supports GENEVE protocol. Built for extra security (Layer 3)

» Sources « #

Stephane Maarek’s AWS playlists on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StephaneMaarek/playlists Full YouTube Rahul’s AWS Course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7iMyoQPMtAN4xl6oWzafqJebfay7K8KP

» References « #

» Table of contents (CLF-C02) « #

1. What is Cloud Computing2. IAM3. Budget
4. EC25. Security Groups6. Storage
7. AMI8. Scalability & High Availability9. Elastic Load Balancing
10. Auto Scaling Group11. S312. Databases
13. Other Compute Services14. Deployments15. AWS Global Infrastructure
16. Cloud Integrations17. Cloud Monitoring18. VPC
19. Security and Compliance20. Machine Learning21. Account Management and Billing
22. Advanced Identity23. Other Services24. AWS Architecting & Ecosystem
25. Preparing for AWS Practitioner exam

» Disclaimer « #

Disclaimer: Content for educational purposes only, no rights reserved.

Most of the content in this series is coming from Stephane Maarek’s Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 2025 course on Udemy.

I highly encourage you to take the Stephane’s courses as they are awesome and really help understanding the subject.

More about Stephane Maarek:

This article is just a summary and has been published to help me learning and passing the practitioner exam.