About Native Connection Load Balancing

Native connection load balancing is a feature built into the Vertica server and client libraries that helps spread the CPU and memory overhead caused by client connections across the hosts in the database. It can prevent unequal distribution of client connections among hosts in the cluster.

There are two types of native connection load balancing:

  • Cluster-wide balancing—This method the legacy method of connection load balancing. It was the only type of load balancing prior to Vertica version 9.2. Using this method, you apply a single load balancing policy across the entire cluster. All connection to the cluster are handled the same way.
  • Load balancing policies—This method lets you set different load balancing policies depending on the source of client connection. For example, you can have a policy that redirects connections from outside of your local network to one set of nodes in your cluster, and connections from within your local network to another set of nodes.