What is the primary function of AWS Elastic Load Balancing?

The primary function of AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is to distribute incoming application traffic across multiple targets such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, or IP addresses. This capability ensures that no single resource is overwhelmed by too much traffic, thereby increasing the availability and fault tolerance of applications. By spreading the load, ELB not only helps in managing traffic efficiently but also enhances the performance and reliability of applications running in a cloud environment.

In practice, this means that if one of the targets becomes unavailable, ELB can automatically reroute traffic to the remaining healthy targets, ensuring continuity of service. This load distribution is vital for maintaining optimal application performance, particularly during varying traffic levels.

Understanding this function is crucial for anyone using AWS to ensure they can design applications that utilize resources effectively and maintain high availability for their users.