Question

An e-commerce company has launched a new application and determined that it needs to perform load distribution for http and https traffic because of the increased traffic during the monthly discount days. Which Load Balancer would be suitable?

A. Classic Load Balancer

B. Legacy Load Balancer

C. Application Load Balancer

D. Network Load Balancer

Answer 1

Answer: C.

Option A is INCORRECT.

Classic Load Balancer operates at request and connection level and provides basic load balancing.

Option B is INCORRECT.

Legacy Load Balancer is an invalid option.

Option C is CORRECT.

Application Load Balancer is apt for http and https traffic load balancing.

Application load balancer operates at layer 7.

Option D is INCORRECT.

Network Load Balancer is apt for TCP, UDP, TLS traffic load balancing and helps provide extreme performance.

Reference:

https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/#:~:text=Elastic%20Load%20Balancing%20automatically%20distributes,or%20across%20multiple%20Availability%20Zones.

For an e-commerce company that needs to perform load distribution for http and https traffic due to increased traffic during monthly discount days, the suitable load balancer would be the Application Load Balancer (ALB).

Explanation:

1. Classic Load Balancer (CLB):

• It is the oldest type of load balancer offered by AWS and is used for distributing traffic evenly across multiple EC2 instances.
• It operates at the transport layer (Layer 4) of the OSI model and supports only TCP and SSL/TLS protocols.
• It does not support HTTP/2 or WebSockets.
• Classic Load Balancer is not suitable for the given scenario as it is an outdated technology and does not provide advanced features like content-based routing.

2. Legacy Load Balancer:

• There is no such thing as a "Legacy Load Balancer" in AWS.

3. Application Load Balancer (ALB):

• It is the recommended load balancer for HTTP/HTTPS traffic and is suitable for distributing traffic to multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses.
• It operates at the application layer (Layer 7) of the OSI model and supports advanced features such as content-based routing, host- and path-based routing, and WebSocket traffic.
• The ALB can route traffic based on the content of the request, such as the URL path or headers, which makes it well-suited for use in microservices architectures.

4. Network Load Balancer (NLB):

• It is suitable for handling TCP/UDP traffic and is designed to handle millions of requests per second with low latency.
• NLB operates at the transport layer (Layer 4) of the OSI model and can handle extreme performance requirements.
• Network Load Balancer is not suitable for the given scenario as it does not support HTTP/HTTPS traffic, and it's an overkill for the requirements mentioned in the question.

Therefore, the Application Load Balancer (ALB) is the most suitable load balancer for the given scenario. It is designed to handle HTTP/HTTPS traffic and provides advanced features like content-based routing, host- and path-based routing, and WebSocket traffic, making it well-suited for an e-commerce company that needs to handle increased traffic during monthly discount days.