Intelligent load balancing management in cloud web hosting: Evaluation criteria and methodology

This paper presents a methodology for selecting a software load balancer designed for cloud-cluster web hosting environments that use a large number of Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates, perform their dynamic rotation, and integrate with an asynchronous network traffic analysis system. It is shown that traditional methods of evaluating load balancers, based on static testing of throughput and response time, do not reflect real operating conditions, where the system configuration constantly changes, block lists are updated, the composition of servers varies, and compliance with the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is required. Under such conditions, the load balancer should be considered an active control element capable of handling tens of thousands of certificates, applying configuration changes without process restarts, updating internal in-memory data structures, and providing reliable telemetry for automatic scaling systems. A new evaluation approach is proposed, based on the concept of a “dynamic benchmark,” which combines load testing with gradual configuration complexity: increasing the number of domains, updating certificates, applying new block list entries, and changing cluster topology. Key evaluation criteria are defined, including scalability, resilience under dynamic changes, flexibility for implementing custom logic, manageability, and completeness of observability. The developed methodology eliminates the existing gap between academic research and the practical operation of modern hosting platforms and creates a foundation for further experimental validation and the development of a next-generation load balancer prototype focused on reliability, adaptability, and intelligent load management.