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Load Balancing · question
Q.03 of 26

Explain the difference between hardware and software load balancers.

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  • Dedicated physical appliances (F5, Citrix NetScaler)
  • High performance and reliability
  • Expensive and less flexible
  • Vendor lock-in
  • Difficult to scale quickly

Software Load Balancers:

  • Run on standard servers or virtual machines
  • More cost-effective and flexible
  • Easier to configure and update
  • Can be cloud-native
  • Examples: HAProxy, NGINX, Traefik

Most modern applications prefer software load balancers due to their flexibility and integration with cloud environments.

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