Load Balancing
Distributing traffic across multiple servers or links to improve performance and availability.
Load balancing distributes incoming client requests across a pool of servers so no single server bears the full workload, improving both throughput and fault tolerance. Common algorithms include round-robin (requests rotate through servers in order), least-connections (traffic goes to the server with the fewest active sessions), and weighted distribution (higher-capacity servers receive proportionally more traffic). The exam distinction from simple redundancy matters: redundancy keeps a standby resource idle until needed, while load balancing actively uses all servers at once. A load balancer also runs health checks, automatically removing an unresponsive server from rotation.
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