What feature allows OCI load balancers to distribute incoming application traffic?

The feature that enables OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) load balancers to distribute incoming application traffic effectively is health checks. Health checks are crucial because they ensure that the load balancer can determine the availability and responsiveness of the backend servers it is directing traffic to.

When a load balancer receives incoming requests, it performs health checks on the backend instances to decide which ones are healthy and can accept traffic. If a backend instance fails a health check, the load balancer automatically stops sending traffic to that instance and redistributes the traffic among the remaining healthy instances. This proactive approach enhances the resilience of the application and maintains an optimal user experience by minimizing downtime and ensuring that requests are handled by servers that are fully operational.

While traffic policies, auto scaling, and routing information can also play roles in managing traffic flow or scaling resources, health checks are specifically what enable the load balancer to evaluate the state of backend resources and make informed decisions on traffic distribution.