Network load balancer

With a load balancing solution, such as Windows Server Network Load Balancing, several VMs are configured identically and the load balancer distributes service requests across each of the VMs fairly evenly. This process reduces the risk of any single VM becoming overloaded. Using load balancing is an effective way to eliminate VM downtime because VMs can be individually rotated and serviced without taking the service offline. However, load balancing only works with identical VMs, which have no shared or centralized data.

Load balancing is an effective way of increasing the availability of critical applications. When server failure instances are detected, they are seamlessly replaced when the traffic is automatically redistributed to servers that are still running. Not only does load balancing lead to high availability it also facilitates incremental scalability. Network load balancing facilitates higher levels of fault tolerance within service applications.

The configuration for the Network Load Balancer (NLB) appliance varies depending on the vendor and type of appliance, and must be managed by the end customer’s internal IT administrator. The generic requirements for each protocol configured on the NLB appliance are outlined.

The recommended load balancing method used is Layer 4 in a direct server return/N-Path/direct routing configuration. Layer 4 load balancing uses information defined at the networking transport layer as the basis for deciding how to distribute client requests across a group of servers.