gRPC load balancing can be implemented using two main strategies: client-side and server-side.
Client-side load balancing involves the client having knowledge of available servers and their loads, making decisions on which server to send requests. This requires a service discovery mechanism for clients to get updated server lists.
Server-side load balancing is handled by a dedicated load balancer that directs traffic to servers based on their current load. The client only needs to know the address of the load balancer.
In both cases, gRPC uses HTTP/2 as transport protocol, allowing multiplexing multiple requests over a single TCP connection, reducing network congestion and improving overall performance.
For example, in Kubernetes environment, you could use a service mesh like Istio or Linkerd for advanced load balancing features such as circuit breaking, rate limiting, etc.
