load-balancer

name	load-balancer
description	Expert skill for load balancer configuration, algorithms, and high availability design
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read","Write","Edit","Glob","Grep"]
graph	{"domains":["domain:networking"],"specializations":["specialization:network-programming"],"skillAreas":["skill-area:protocol-design","skill-area:socket-programming"],"roles":["role:backend-engineer","role:sre"],"topics":["topic:circuit-breakers"]}

Load Balancer Skill

Expert skill for load balancer configuration, algorithm implementation, and high availability design.

Capabilities

• HAProxy Configuration: Configure HAProxy for L4/L7 load balancing with advanced features
• NGINX Load Balancing: Set up NGINX as a reverse proxy and load balancer
• Algorithm Implementation: Implement round-robin, weighted, least-connections, IP-hash, and consistent hashing
• Health Checking: Design comprehensive health check strategies (TCP, HTTP, custom)
• Session Persistence: Configure sticky sessions, cookie-based affinity, and source IP persistence
• Load Distribution Analysis: Analyze and optimize traffic distribution across backends
• High Availability: Configure HA pairs with failover using keepalived/VRRP
• SSL/TLS Termination: Configure TLS termination and re-encryption

Tools and Dependencies

• HAProxy - High-performance TCP/HTTP load balancer
• NGINX - Web server and reverse proxy
• keepalived - HA and failover
• LVS/IPVS - Linux Virtual Server
• haproxyctl - HAProxy management

Target Processes

• layer4-load-balancer.js
• layer7-load-balancer.js
• health-check-system.js

Usage Examples

HAProxy Backend Configuration

backend web_servers
    balance roundrobin
    option httpchk GET /health
    http-check expect status 200
    server web1 10.0.0.1:80 check weight 100
    server web2 10.0.0.2:80 check weight 100 backup

NGINX Upstream Configuration

upstream backend {
    least_conn;
    server 10.0.0.1:8080 weight=5;
    server 10.0.0.2:8080;
    keepalive 32;
}

Health Check Verification

echo "show stat" | socat stdio /var/run/haproxy/admin.sock

Quality Gates

• Backend health verification
• Load distribution validation
• Failover testing
• Performance benchmarking
• Session persistence verification