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AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) – Beginner’s Guide

🌍 Introduction

When you run an application on AWS, having just one server (EC2 instance) is risky:

  • If that server fails → your app goes down ❌
  • If too many users visit → server may crash ❌

👉 That’s where Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) comes in.

AWS ELB automatically distributes traffic across multiple servers (EC2, containers, Lambda). This ensures:
✅ High availability
✅ Scalability
✅ Fault tolerance

By the end, you’ll understand:
👉 Browser → ELB (smart routing + health checks) → Healthy Servers (EC2, ECS, Lambda)


🔒 Step 1: Understand ELB Types

AWS provides different types of load balancers for different use cases:

1️⃣ Application Load Balancer (ALB)

  • Works at Layer 7 (Application Layer)
  • Best for HTTP/HTTPS traffic
  • Supports content-based routing (host, path, headers)
  • Example: /api/* → API servers, /images/* → image servers

2️⃣ Network Load Balancer (NLB)

  • Works at Layer 4 (Transport Layer)
  • Handles TCP/UDP/TLS traffic
  • Extremely fast + scalable (millions of requests/sec)
  • Provides static IPs
  • Example: gaming, IoT, high-performance apps

3️⃣ Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB)

  • Works at Layer 3 (Network Layer)
  • For 3rd-party appliances (firewalls, intrusion detection)

4️⃣ Classic Load Balancer (CLB)

  • Legacy version
  • Works at Layer 4 & 7 (limited features)
  • ⚠️ AWS recommends using ALB or NLB instead

⚡ Step 2: Learn Key ELB Terminologies

Here are the basic terms you’ll see when setting up ELB:

Term Meaning
Target Resource receiving traffic (EC2, Lambda, IP)
Target Group A pool of targets (with health checks)
Listener Process that checks for connections (protocol + port)
Listener Rule Routing conditions (e.g., /api/* → API group)
Health Check ELB test to ensure only healthy servers get traffic
AZ (Availability Zone) AWS data centers where servers run
Cross-Zone LB Distribute traffic across all AZs
Sticky Sessions Keep same user on the same server
Security Groups Firewall for ELB
Idle Timeout Time before idle connections close
SSL/TLS Cert Enables HTTPS (via AWS ACM)

📜 Step 3: How ELB Works

  1. User visits your app (e.g., myapp.com)
  2. Request goes to ELB Listener (port 80 or 443)
  3. ELB checks Listener Rules
  4. ELB forwards request to the correct Target Group
  5. Health Check ensures only healthy servers receive traffic
  6. Response goes back → ELB → user

👉 Flow: Browser → ELB → Healthy Server → ELB → Browser


🌐 Step 4: Benefits of ELB

Scalability – Auto-scales with traffic
High Availability – Multi-AZ support
Security – SSL/TLS, WAF integration
Monitoring – CloudWatch metrics, access logs
Cost Efficient – Pay-as-you-go pricing


🧪 Step 5: Real-World Example

Imagine an E-commerce website:

  • You run 3 EC2 instances in different AZs
  • Deploy an Application Load Balancer in front
  • A user goes to www.shop.com → ELB receives request
  • ELB checks which server is healthy + least busy
  • Routes request → Server responds → User gets page
  • If one server crashes → traffic reroutes to healthy ones 🎉

🎯 Conclusion

With ELB, you get:

✅ Better performance
✅ Zero downtime (if a server fails)
✅ Intelligent routing
✅ Secure connections

👉 For websites → ALB
👉 For high-performance TCP apps → NLB
👉 For firewalls/security → GWLB

This is the recommended AWS setup for building highly available, production-grade applications 🚀

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