How does load balancing improve system availability and performance?
This networking/system design question explores distributing traffic across multiple servers to handle scale.
Why Interviewers Ask This
E-commerce sites face massive traffic spikes; interviewers need to verify you understand scaling strategies. Load balancing prevents single points of failure and optimizes resource utilization. This question assesses your ability to design resilient, high-performance architectures.
How to Answer This Question
Define load balancing as distributing incoming requests across a pool of servers. Explain benefits like fault tolerance and reduced latency. Mention algorithms like round-robin or least connections. Discuss health checks and session persistence.
Key Points to Cover
- Traffic distribution
- Fault tolerance
- Algorithms overview
- Health monitoring
Sample Answer
Load balancing distributes network traffic across multiple servers to ensure no single server becomes overwhelmed. This improves availability by rerouting traffic if a server fails and enhances performance by minimizing response times. Algorithms like round-robin evenly spread requests, while least connections send traffic to the least busy server. Health checks constantly monitor server status, ensuring only healthy nodes receive traffic, which is critical during flash sales.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Focusing only on hardware
- Ignoring session persistence
- Missing health check details
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