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NGINX HTTP Load Balancing

Configure round robin, least connections, IP hash and health checks in NGINX.

IntermediateLoad Balancer

By NGINX · F5 / NGINX · Added 2026-08-28

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F5 / NGINX documents a tool you may use. Decide what you want to do with it, then read only what answers that.

Ideas you will meet

Load Balancer
Spread traffic across servers with L4/L7 balancing, health checks and algorithms.

What we already know about this

Our own lessons on these ideas. Read them here before you start, so it makes sense.

  • System Design Foundations · 10 minFrom one server to many: scaling and load balancingVertical versus horizontal scaling, why stateless servers matter, and how a load balancer spreads traffic.Read here

    Two ways to grow

    When one server is not enough you have two options.

    A technician working at a server rack in a data centerImage: Derrick Coetzee · CC0 · Source · Wikimedia Commons: Technician with laptop working on server rack at NERSC

    • Vertical scaling ("scale up"): use a bigger machine with more CPU, memory or disk. It is simple because nothing in the design changes.
    • Horizontal scaling ("scale out"): add more machines and share the work between them. It needs more design effort but has no hard ceiling.
    VerticalHorizontal
    EffortLowHigher
    CeilingHardware limitPractically none
    FailureOne machine is a single point of failureSurvives losing a machine
    Cost curveGets steep for the largest machinesRoughly linear with commodity machines

    Real systems use both: scale up until it gets expensive or risky, then scale out.

    Figure SDA-FND-02-1 · Scale up versus scale out · © forcsguy.com

    What a load balancer does

    Once you have several servers, something must decide which one handles each request. That is the load balancer.

    Figure SDA-FND-02-2 · Load balancer in front of a server pool · © forcsguy.com

    It does three jobs:

    1. Distributes requests so no server is overloaded.
    2. Checks health. It probes each server regularly and stops sending traffic to ones that fail.
    3. Hides the pool. Clients talk to one address, and servers can be added or removed without clients noticing.

    Common strategies

    • Round robin: take turns. Simple and fine when requests are similar.
    • Least connections: send to the server with the fewest active requests. Better when request cost varies.
    • Hashing (for example on user id or IP): the same key goes to the same server. Useful when a server keeps a local cache for that key.
    • Weighted: bigger machines get a bigger share.

    Load balancers work at different layers. A layer 4 balancer routes by IP and port and is very fast. A layer 7 balancer reads the HTTP request, so it can route by URL path or header and terminate TLS.

    A security benefit comes with this layout: only the balancer needs a public address. The servers behind it use private addresses, reachable from inside the network but not from the internet, so clients cannot bypass the balancer or attack a server directly. If one server goes offline, the balancer sends its traffic to the others and a replacement can join the pool.

    Before: one server

    After: load balancer and several servers

    What changed

    • Traffic is shared across servers
    • One server failing no longer takes the site down
    • You can add capacity without downtime

    Stateless servers make scaling easy

    A server is stateless when it keeps nothing about a user between requests. Everything it needs comes from the request or from a shared store.

    Figure SDA-FND-02-3 · Stateful versus stateless servers · © forcsguy.com

    With stateless servers any request can go to any server, so you can add servers at will, replace a failed one without losing data, and run auto-scaling. The state does not disappear. It moves to a database, a cache or a session store, which you then have to scale and protect, which is what the next lessons are about.

    Putting it together

    A typical first scalable layout:

    1. Users reach a load balancer.
    2. It spreads requests over a pool of stateless application servers.
    3. Servers read and write a shared database (and later a cache).
    4. Static files such as images and scripts are served from a CDN so the servers do not carry that traffic (lesson 9).

    This design handles a surprisingly large amount of traffic. The first thing to give way is usually the database, which is where we go next.

    A worked example: how many servers do you need?

    Capacity planning is arithmetic you can do on a napkin. Say your product has 5 million daily users and each makes about 20 requests a day.

    1. Requests per day: 5,000,000 x 20 = 100 million.
    2. Per second on average: 100,000,000 / 86,400 = about 1,160 requests per second.
    3. Traffic is not flat. A common rule of thumb is that the busiest second is 2 to 3 times the average, so plan for about 3,500 per second.
    4. One server handles about 400 requests per second flat out, but you never want servers at 100%: queues build and latency explodes near full load. Plan for roughly 70% utilisation, so 280 requests per second each.
    5. 3,500 / 280 = 12.5, so 13 servers carry the peak.
    6. Add spare capacity so you survive failures: with 13 servers, losing 2 leaves 11, which carry only 3,080 requests per second. Plan for N+2: 15 servers.

    Figure SDA-FND-02-4 · From users to a server count · © forcsguy.com

    The same method works for any tier. Only the "requests per server" number changes, and you should measure it with a load test rather than guess.

    Choosing a balancing method with real numbers

    Round robin is fair in the number of requests, not in the work. Imagine three servers and a stream where most requests take 10 ms but every fifth takes 1 second (a report export, say). Round robin gives each server the same count, but by chance one server collects several slow requests at once, its queue grows, and its users wait while the other two are nearly idle.

    Least connections notices: the server with the most open requests gets fewer new ones, so the slow requests spread out as they arrive. It costs the balancer a little bookkeeping and helps most when request costs vary a lot. Use plain round robin when requests are similar and servers identical; use least connections, or "power of two choices" (pick two servers at random and send to the less busy one), when they are not. For caches and stateful workloads, consistent hashing keeps the same key on the same server so its memory stays useful.

    Health checks and draining

    A balancer is only as good as its knowledge of which servers are alive.

    • Active health checks call a lightweight endpoint (for example /health) every few seconds. After two or three failures in a row, the server leaves rotation; after a few successes it returns. Make the check reflect real readiness: a server that is up but cannot reach its database should fail the check.
    • Passive checks watch real traffic: too many errors or timeouts from one server and it is ejected.
    • Connection draining matters at deploys. Before stopping a server, tell the balancer to send it no new requests, let in-flight requests finish (typically 30 to 60 seconds), then stop it. Without draining, every deploy drops a few user requests.

    Figure SDA-FND-02-5 · Rolling out a new version without dropping requests · © forcsguy.com

    Mistakes people make

    • Treating the balancer as magic. It is a server too and can be a single point of failure. Run at least two, or use a managed one.
    • Adding servers behind a single database. App servers scale out easily; if the database is the bottleneck, more app servers only make it fail faster.
    • Keeping state on the server. Sessions, uploads and caches held in one server's memory break the moment a request lands elsewhere. Move them to a shared store.
    • Sizing for the average. The system fails at peak, which is when it matters.
    • Never testing failure. Kill a server during a load test. If users notice, you have found a gap before they did.

    Try it yourself

    Open the System Builder challenge "One server is not enough". Run the test on one server and watch it fail, add a load balancer without adding servers, then add servers and see where the numbers settle. Or skip the challenge and open a load-balanced system on the free canvas, then change the wiring yourself.

    More on this site

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  • Advanced Distributed Systems · 12 minLoad balancing: layer 4, layer 7 and gatewaysWhat a load balancer can see and do at each layer, the algorithms behind it, and how API gateways add routing, aggregation and policy.Read here

    What a load balancer sees

    A load balancer spreads incoming work across servers, removes failed servers and makes scaling invisible to clients. What it can do depends on which layer it works at.

    Layer 4 (transport)Layer 7 (application)
    SeesIP addresses, ports, TCP/UDP connectionsHTTP method, URL, headers, cookies, body
    Decides byConnection detailsRequest content
    TLSPasses through, or terminates in some productsUsually terminates TLS
    Speed and costVery fast, low overheadMore work per request
    Typical featuresSpread connections, health checksPath routing, header rules, sticky sessions, rewrites, caching, WAF rules
    ExamplesNetwork load balancers, LVS, HAProxy in TCP modeNGINX, Envoy, HAProxy HTTP mode, cloud application balancers

    Figure SDA-ADS-05-1 · Layers of balancing in front of an app · © forcsguy.com

    Many designs use both: an L4 tier for raw scale and an L7 tier for smart routing.

    Before: layer 4: ports and addresses

    After: layer 7: reads the request

    What changed

    • Layer 7 can route by path, header or cookie
    • Layer 7 can terminate TLS and retry safely
    • Layer 4 is simpler and faster, with less to configure

    Choosing a target: algorithms

    • Round robin / weighted round robin: simple rotation; weights favour bigger machines.
    • Least connections (and weighted): send to the server with fewest active requests; good when requests vary in length.
    • Least response time: combine active load with measured latency.
    • IP hash / consistent hashing: the same client or key goes to the same server, useful for caches and sticky state (see consistent hashing).
    • Resource-based: servers report load and the balancer follows.

    Health checks (active probes and passive error tracking) remove unhealthy servers; connection draining lets in-flight requests finish before a server is removed during a deploy.

    Global and DNS balancing

    Across regions, DNS-based or global server load balancing directs users to the nearest or healthiest region (see the DNS and CDN lessons). DNS answers are cached, so failover takes as long as the TTL; anycast and global balancers react faster.

    API gateway: policy at the edge

    An API gateway is an L7 component specialised for APIs. Beyond routing it commonly provides:

    • Authentication and authorisation (validate tokens, apply scopes),
    • Rate limiting and quotas (see the rate-limiter lesson),
    • Request and response transformation, versioning, and protocol translation,
    • Aggregation: one client call fans out to several services and merges results, saving round trips for mobile clients,
    • Caching, logging, metrics and tracing in one place.

    Figure SDA-ADS-05-2 · Gateway routing and aggregation · © forcsguy.com

    Risks: the gateway is a single entry point (run several instances, keep it stateless) and can become a bottleneck or a place where business logic piles up. Keep it to cross-cutting concerns. A variation is a backend for frontend: one gateway per client type (web, mobile) tailored to its needs.

    Inside the cluster

    Between services, balancing is done by client-side libraries or sidecar proxies that know the healthy instances from service discovery, so no central balancer is needed for east-west traffic. See the microservices lessons for service mesh ideas.

    Failure habits

    • Run at least two of every balancer and gateway instance across zones.
    • Keep timeouts and retry budgets (see the resilience lesson) so the balancer does not amplify an outage.
    • Use slow start for new instances so they warm up before taking a full share.

    Real-world reading

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  • Classic System Designs · 10 minDesign consistent hashingHow to spread keys over servers so that adding or removing a server moves only a small share of them.Read here

    The problem

    You have a cluster of cache or storage servers and need a rule that says which server holds which key. The first idea is server = hash(key) mod N. It works until N changes, which it always does: a server fails, or you add capacity.

    Figure SDA-CSD-02-1 · Why mod-N hashing breaks when N changes · © forcsguy.com

    When N changes, almost every key maps somewhere new. A cache suddenly misses on nearly everything and the database behind it is flooded. A storage cluster would have to shuffle most of its data.

    Goal: when a server joins or leaves, only about 1/N of the keys should move.

    The idea: a hash ring

    1. Imagine hash values arranged in a circle (the ring), from 0 up to a maximum and wrapping around.
    2. Hash each server onto the ring.
    3. Hash each key onto the same ring.
    4. A key belongs to the first server clockwise from its position.

    Figure SDA-CSD-02-2 · Hash ring ownership · © forcsguy.com

    Adding a server D between A and B takes over only the keys that fall between A and D. Everything else stays where it is. Removing a server hands its keys to its clockwise neighbour. Either way, only the neighbouring arc moves.

    Before: hash mod N

    After: consistent hashing ring

    What changed

    • Adding a server moves only a small slice of keys
    • Cache hit rate does not collapse after a change
    • Virtual nodes even out the load

    Finding the owner efficiently

    Keep the server positions in a sorted list. To place a key, hash it and use a binary search for the first position greater than or equal to it, wrapping to the first server if you pass the end. That is O(log N) per lookup.

    Two problems with the basic ring

    Figure SDA-CSD-02-3 · Why a plain ring can be unfair · © forcsguy.com

    Fixing uneven load: virtual nodes

    With only a handful of servers, the arcs between them are uneven, so some servers hold far more keys. And when a server dies, all its load lands on a single neighbour.

    The fix is virtual nodes: each physical server is hashed at many points (say 100 to 200) on the ring.

    Figure SDA-CSD-02-4 · Virtual nodes per server · © forcsguy.com

    • Keys spread much more evenly.
    • When a server leaves, its load is shared among many others.
    • A bigger server can be given more virtual nodes than a smaller one.

    The cost is a larger ring to store and update.

    Which keys move, exactly

    When a server joins, find the previous server going anticlockwise from it; only the keys between that neighbour and the new server move, and they all move to the new server. When a server leaves, the keys it held (the span back to its anticlockwise neighbour) move to the next server clockwise. Nothing else is touched, which is why the data transfer stays small and predictable.

    Spreading keys evenly also reduces hotspots: without it, several very popular keys can land on the same server and overload it. With many virtual nodes per server, the spread gets tighter (published experiments show the imbalance shrinking from around 10 percent to about 5 percent as virtual nodes per server go from roughly 100 to 200), at the price of more ring metadata to store, so the count is a tuning knob.

    Figure SDA-CSD-02-5 · Adding a server to the ring · © forcsguy.com

    Figure SDA-CSD-02-6 · Removing a server from the ring · © forcsguy.com

    Where it is used

    • Distributed caches (so adding a node does not wipe the cache).
    • Partitioned databases such as Dynamo-style stores, where each key is also copied to the next few servers clockwise for replication (next lesson).
    • Load balancing with stickiness, where the same client keeps hitting the same backend.
    • Content delivery to decide which edge server holds an object.

    Things to watch

    • Hot keys: one very popular key still loads its owner. Replicate it or add a local cache.
    • Choose a good hash function: uniform distribution matters more than cryptographic strength.
    • Membership changes must be learned by all clients consistently, through a config service or gossip, otherwise two clients disagree about the owner.

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