CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701)Security ArchitectureMedium
An e-commerce site experiences a surge in traffic during a holiday sale. To maintain availability and distribute incoming requests evenly across multiple web servers while automatically routing around any server that fails a health check, which component should be deployed?
- ALoad balancer
- BReverse proxy cache
- CWeb application firewall
- DIntrusion prevention system
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Load balancer
A load balancer distributes incoming traffic across multiple backend servers and uses health checks to remove failed servers from rotation, directly supporting scalability and availability.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. A reverse proxy cache can improve performance by caching content but does not primarily perform health-check-based failover distribution.
- C. A WAF filters malicious HTTP requests but does not distribute load across multiple servers.
- D. An IPS detects and blocks malicious traffic patterns, not traffic distribution for availability.
Load Balancer
A network device or service that distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers, improving performance, scalability, and availability through health monitoring.
- Supports high availability by rerouting around failed nodes
- Common algorithms: round robin, least connections, weighted
- Can operate at Layer 4 (transport) or Layer 7 (application)
Memory trick: Load balancer = traffic cop directing cars to open lanes.