Network Load Balancing

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Network Load Balancing Overview

Network Load Balancing clusters distribute client connections over multiple servers, providing scalability and high availability for client requests for TCP/IP-based services and applications.

The heart of Network Load Balancing is the driver Wlbs.sys, which is loaded into each member server, or host, in the cluster. Wlbs.sys includes the statistical mapping algorithm that the cluster hosts collectively use to determine which host handles each incoming request.

Load-balanced applications need to carefully manage state on the server. State that is persistent across multiple requests or that is shared among clients needs to be shared in locations that are transparently accessible from all cluster hosts. Updates to state that is shared among the hosts needs to be synchronized — for example, by using a back-end database server.

Network Load Balancing provides the following:

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