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How do load balancers decide which compute instances to route traffic to inside a multi-AZ cloud architecture?

Asked on Oct 06, 2025

Answer

Load balancers in a multi-AZ cloud architecture distribute incoming traffic across multiple compute instances to ensure high availability and fault tolerance. They use algorithms such as round-robin, least connections, or IP hash to determine which instance should handle each request, taking into account the health and availability of instances across different availability zones.

Example Concept: In a multi-AZ setup, load balancers use health checks to monitor the status of compute instances and route traffic only to healthy instances. They employ algorithms like round-robin, which distributes requests evenly across all instances, or least connections, which sends traffic to the instance with the fewest active connections. This ensures balanced load distribution and resilience against instance or zone failures.

Additional Comment:

Load balancers can be configured to prioritize certain availability zones to optimize latency or resource utilization.
Health checks are critical for ensuring traffic is not sent to unhealthy instances, which could degrade application performance.
Some cloud providers offer advanced routing features, such as sticky sessions, to maintain session persistence across requests.
Multi-AZ load balancing enhances fault tolerance by automatically rerouting traffic in case of an instance or zone failure.

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How do load balancers decide which compute instances to route traffic to inside a multi-AZ cloud architecture?

Asked on Oct 06, 2025

Answer

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