Load Balancer vs Reverse Proxy

• Deploying a load balancer is useful when you have multiple servers. Often, load balancers route traffic to a set of servers serving the same function.
• Reverse proxies can be useful even with just one web server or application server, opening up the benefits described in the previous section.
• Solutions such as NGINX and HAProxy can support both layer 7 reverse proxying and load balancing.

Disadvantages of Reverse Proxy:

• Introducing a reverse proxy results in increased complexity.
• A single reverse proxy is a single point of failure, configuring multiple reverse proxies (ie a failover) further increases complexity.

To learn more visit the following links:

• Reverse Proxy vs Load Balancer
• NGINX Architecture
• HAProxy Architecture Guide
• Reverse Proxy