Why are Load Balancer + API Gateway used together? What is the role of each component?

The Load Balancer + API Gateway bundle is used for efficient load distribution and API request management.

Load Balancer:

• Distributes incoming traffic among multiple service instances or servers.
• Ensures fault tolerance and scalability.
• Operates at the network request level (e.g., TCP/HTTP), without analyzing API content.

API Gateway:

• Serves as the entry point for all API requests.
• Routes requests to the appropriate microservices.
• Provides additional functions: authentication, authorization, data aggregation, request and response transformation, rate limiting.

Role of each component:

• The Load Balancer distributes load among multiple API Gateway instances or services, ensuring scalability and fault tolerance.
• The API Gateway manages the logic of API request processing, ensuring security and convenience for clients.

Thus, the Load Balancer is responsible for traffic distribution and resilience, while the API Gateway manages and processes API requests.