Abstract
Benefits
Smart load balancing
- We can look at the data & HTTP Headers, and this enables micro-services
- Enables Authentication since we have access to the HTTP Request in plaintext
Cacheing
- Because we have access to the Data
Relieve Computation Load
- We can perform SSL Termination on Application Load Balancer, so the destination server can focus its computation power on fulfilling the user’s requests
Cons
Slower
- It needs to unpack the data all the way to OSI Application Layer to view at the Data
More Network Resource Intense
- We need to establish 2 TCP Connection instead of Network Load Balancer’s single TCP Connection
- One for the communication between the client and the load balancer, one for the communication between the load balancer and the servers
External Application Load Balancer
- Application Load Balancer that is accessible from Internet
- Inside Public Subnet & has a Public IP
Internal Application Load Balancer
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Application Load Balancer that is NOT accessible from Internet
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Inside Private Subnet & Doesn’t have a Public IP
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Routing internal micro-services traffic within the Computer Network like VPC
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For backend services that shouldn’t be exposed to the Internet