Elastic Load Balancing
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is an AWS service that automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses, in one or more Availability Zones. It monitors the health of its registered targets and routes traffic only to healthy targets, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance for applications. ELB scales load balancer capacity automatically in response to incoming traffic, making it suitable for handling varying workloads.
Developers should use Elastic Load Balancing when building scalable, highly available applications on AWS, such as web applications, microservices, or APIs that require traffic distribution across multiple servers to handle high volumes of requests. It is essential for improving application performance by reducing latency and preventing server overload, and it integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like Auto Scaling and Route 53 for automated scaling and DNS management. Use cases include e-commerce sites, streaming services, and enterprise applications where uptime and reliability are critical.