Workload Distribution

How can IT resource over-utilization be avoided?

Problem

IT resources subjected to high volumes of concurrent usage can suffer degraded performance, reduced availability and reliability, and can become susceptible to overall failure.

Solution

The IT resource is horizontally scaled and a load balancing system is used to distribute runtime workloads across multiple IT resources.

Application

Load balancing technology is incorporated into the cloud architecture and configured with appropriate load balancing algorithms to ensure effective workload distribution.

Mechanisms

Audit Monitor, Cloud Storage Device, Cloud Usage Monitor, Container, Hypervisor, Load Balancer, Logical Network Perimeter, Resource Cluster, Resource Replication, Virtual Server

Compound Patterns

Burst In, Burst Out to Private Cloud, Burst Out to Public Cloud, Cloud Authentication, Cloud Balancing, Elastic Environment, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Isolated Trust Boundary, Multitenant Environment, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Resilient Environment, Resource Workload Management, Secure Burst Out to Private Cloud/Public Cloud, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

A redundant copy of Cloud Service A is implemented on Virtual Server B. The load balancer intercepts the cloud service consumer requests and directs them to both Virtual Server A and B to ensure even distribution of the workload.

NIST Reference Architecture Mapping

This pattern relates to the highlighted parts of the NIST reference architecture, as follows: