Using Containers for Microservices: Benefits and Challenges for your Organization
Blog post from Qovery
AWS offers three types of load balancers—Application Load Balancer (ALB), Network Load Balancer (NLB), and Gateway Load Balancer—each designed for specific use cases and operational layers. ALB operates at the application layer (Layer 7) and is ideal for web-based traffic, while NLB works at the transport layer (Layer 4) and is suitable for handling raw traffic loads, network spikes, and applications like RDP and SSH. Gateway Load Balancer is best for third-party virtual applications. Key tips for optimizing AWS load balancers include enforcing HTTPS traffic, using Amazon Certificate Manager for SSL certificates, registering EC2 instances across different availability zones for high availability, and leveraging monitoring tools like Amazon CloudWatch and DataDog. Other recommendations include enabling cross-zone load balancing, connection draining, and pre-warming load balancers for scalability. Users are advised to configure security groups properly, utilize ECS for containerized applications, and consider solutions like Qovery to simplify the complexities associated with managing AWS load balancers.