# Deep Dive into Maglev, Google's Load Balancer

DevFeed: [Deep Dive into Maglev, Google's Load Balancer](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/deep-dive-into-maglev-google-s-load-balancer-39613.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.gauravsarma.com/posts/2020-05-24_Deep-Dive-into-Maglev--Google-s-Load-Balancer-f5fa943d578c>)

Published: 2020-05-24T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Gaurav Sarma's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/gaurav-sarma-s-blog.md>)

Topics: [Google](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/google.md>), [consistent hashing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/consistent-hashing.md>), [scaling](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/scaling.md>), [Software](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software.md>), [Availability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/availability.md>), [Hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hardware.md>)

Tags: [consistent-hashing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/consistent-hashing.md>), [deep-dive](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/deep-dive.md>), [distributed](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed.md>), [google](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/google.md>), [hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hardware.md>), [health](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/health.md>), [load-balancer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/load-balancer.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [scaling](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scaling.md>), [software](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains Maglev, Google's software load balancer, and summarizes design choices that support operation at Google's scale. It covers commodity hardware, distributed scale-out architecture, connection-tuple routing, line-rate traffic handling, Direct Server Return, Maglev hashing, reduced cross-thread synchronization, and backend health tracking.

## Source excerpt

I recently heard about Maglev, the load balancer that Google uses in front of most of its services. I wanted to get a short gist on the matter to understand the reason why Google had to create its own load balancer and the optimizations that they took in order to actually run a load balancer at Google's scale...