ALB vs NLB decision in AWS - Hands-On Comparison

ALB vs NLB Decision

📖 Scenario: You are working as a cloud architect for a company that needs to set up load balancing for their web applications. They want to understand when to use an Application Load Balancer (ALB) versus a Network Load Balancer (NLB) in AWS.Your task is to create a simple decision helper in Python that helps decide which load balancer to use based on the application requirements.

🎯 Goal: Build a Python script that stores application requirements and uses simple logic to decide whether to use an ALB or NLB.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary with application requirements

Add a configuration variable for traffic type

Write logic to decide ALB or NLB based on traffic type

Output the final decision as a variable

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Choosing the right AWS load balancer is important for application performance and cost optimization.

💼 Career

Cloud architects and engineers often need to decide between ALB and NLB based on application needs.

1

Create application requirements dictionary

Create a dictionary called app_requirements with these exact entries: 'protocol': 'HTTP', 'port': 80, 'target_type': 'instance'

AWS

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces to create a dictionary with keys and values exactly as shown.

2

Add traffic type configuration

Add a variable called traffic_type and set it to the string 'HTTP'

AWS

app_requirements = {'protocol': 'HTTP', 'port': 80, 'target_type': 'instance'}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'HTTP' to the variable traffic_type.

3

Write decision logic for load balancer

Write an if statement that sets a variable load_balancer_choice to 'ALB' if traffic_type is 'HTTP', otherwise set it to 'NLB'

AWS

app_requirements = {'protocol': 'HTTP', 'port': 80, 'target_type': 'instance'}
traffic_type = 'HTTP'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an if-else statement to assign the correct load balancer choice based on traffic_type.

4

Set final decision variable

Add a variable called final_decision and set it equal to load_balancer_choice

AWS

app_requirements = {'protocol': 'HTTP', 'port': 80, 'target_type': 'instance'}
traffic_type = 'HTTP'
if traffic_type == 'HTTP':
    load_balancer_choice = 'ALB'
else:
    load_balancer_choice = 'NLB'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the variable final_decision to the value of load_balancer_choice.