Load balancer
Also called: LB, Reverse proxy
A component that spreads incoming requests across several servers.
Definition
A load balancer sits in front of a group of servers and forwards each request to one of them, for example round-robin or to the least busy one. It lets you scale horizontally by adding servers, and takes unhealthy servers out of rotation using health checks.
In practice
During a sale, an online shop adds ten more API instances behind its load balancer without changing the app.
Learn it in context
Lessons that use this term.