Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple backend servers based on the listening rules you configure. ELB expands the service capabilities of your applications and improves their availability by eliminating single points of failure (SPOFs).
ELB consists of the following components:
You can set a weight for each backend server based on their performance.
You can also configure health checks for a backend server group to check the health of each backend server. When a backend server is unhealthy, the load balancer stops routing new requests to this server.
ELB provides the following types of load balancers: classic load balancer, dedicated load balancer, and shared load balancer. Dedicated load balancer and shared load balancer are called elastic load balancers collectively.
Currently, dedicated load balancers are supported only in the eu-nl region.
Classic load balancers can no longer be created on the management console. Use shared load balancers or dedicated load balancers instead.
For details, see Differences Between Dedicated and Shared Load Balancers.
For details, see Differences Between Shared and Classic Load Balancers.
You can use either of the following methods to access ELB:
Log in to the management console and choose Network > Elastic Load Balancing (ELB).
You can call APIs to access ELB. For details, see the Elastic Load Balancing API Reference.
By default, load balancers created in the eu-de region are shared load balancers. APIs for shared load balancers are available only in this region.
By default, load balancers created in the eu-nl region are dedicated load balancers. APIs for dedicated load balancers are available only in this region.