Load balancing with Keepalived

Load balancing is a method for distributing IP traffic across a cluster of real servers, providing one or more virtual services for high availability.

Keepalived provides a working environment for load balancing and hence high availability. Keepalived runs based on a Linux Virtual Server (IPVS) kernel module at layer 4. It also implements a set of state checkers to dynamically manage and maintain server clusters based on their state. High availability is achieved through the Virtual Redundancy Routing Protocol (VRRP). VRRP is a fundamental building block for router failover. In this context, the load balancer can also be referred to as a director or LVS router.